Cool cakes

Been back in hiatus-land while I wait for my trusty Mac Guru to fix the ol' lappy -- which I thought had happened, but sadly, was only temporary. Thanks for all your help, James. While I continue lusting after a working compubox (new or used, just working would be nice), I'm going back into general blog shut-down mode. In the meantime, have fun with these crazy cakes!

First up: Geek Cakes & Cookies from BCakeNY. Here's their iPhone cake, which is pretty boss:

And second, the Threadless Threadcake winners are all pictured here. My personal favorite is the third runner-up, The Red Cake:

Dang, now I'm hungry. Good thing it's a coworker's birthday -- I wore my cake shirt today and everything.

Yum! Flourless Nut Butter Chip Cookies

This is a batch of cookies from a recipe I made up. It's delicious. I've made these cookies a bajillion times, given them as gifts, and have finally figured out which brand of peanut butter makes for the most consistent results (Adams, if you're curious).

Thought I'd post some after-St.-Patrick's drool-worthiness to go with the hangover:

Recipe: Rolled Biscuits

Pulled out the rolling pin this week for a rolled biscuit recipe I've been looking at sideways for a while now. Will they come out flaky and fluffy, or will they fall flat? Rolled biscuits, here I come.

Recipe: Rolled Biscuits
1 3/4 c. flour
1/4 tsp. salt
3 tsp. double-acting baking powder
6 Tbsp. chilled butter
3/4 c. milk
Extra flour for dusting

0. Preheat your oven to 450ºF (my oven runs hot & in fairly precise increments of 5º, so I set it to 445ºF).



1. Sift flour, salt and baking powder into a large mixing bowl. Cut in chilled butter using a fork or a biscuit cutter, until pastry has a clump-free, flaking consistency. Create a cavity in the center of the dough and pour in the milk. Use a fork to stir the liquid into the pastry, turning it around the bowl until it begins to pull away from the sides.

2. Turn the dough on to a floured board and knead quickly -- only 8 to 10 times, so it retains a flaky consistency and doesn't get tough. Roll the dough out in as few strokes as possible. Use a round pastry cutter, a large cookie cutter, or even a floured glass to cut the biscuits into shape, then place on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes. Cool 2 minutes before serving with butter.

Well, here's how they came out:



Yup, flat as flat can be. I could barely pull apart two halves of the biscuit to put butter inside. Though they worked for my purposes (dipping in soup), I think I'll probably try a different dough next time, because this experiment turned out far from perfect. I was fantasizing about flaky, puffy, southern-style biscuit towers and I got a squished-down version instead. Maybe it's time to seek out a bag of White Lily and see if I can't turn out a batch of these.

Vegan Cupcakes: Vanilla-Agave

What better way to start back up on the ol' blog than by making up a batch of simple vanilla-agave vegan cupcakes? Also, I had an excuse since I've wanted to celebrate having a new roommate in my little apartment today. I grabbed my copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World (essential, seriously), shopped for a few missing ingredients, and made my way back to the kitchen.

The great thing about vegan cupcakes is that the ingredients come together so quickly, in a way that traditional dairy-full cupcakes just don't. (The icing is always delicious and fluffy, too, but I've got some left over cream cheese icing from my last baking experiment, so the finished product wasn't completely dairy-free.) Oil-based cupcake recipes tend to make spongier, fluffy cupcakes, but they don't rise as much, according to my past experience. And, just as I suspected, they were dense, moist and rich, but didn't rise sky-high over the pan's edge.

The flat surfaces made them easy to frost, so with the icing at a perfectly spreadable temperature, the finished product turned out quite pretty (if I do say so myself). The result? Delicious.

seize the cake: The Return

After a lengthy hiatus from the interwebz (personal crises, no web access in the home and self-imposed blogging moratorium at the day job necessitated the break), I'm back! Didja miss me?

I know I missed the blog. Between the Bacon Explosion, Maple-Bacon Buttercream, and Candied Bacon, I feel like I've missed a lot. And that's just where the New York Times' Dining section and the awesomeness that is bacon intersect! Imagine what else may have gone unblogged! (Okay, no imagining necessary: I made a version of this bacon brittle and the photo below is the only evidence I've got of the process -- bad blogger!)


Well, the cake demands to be seized! Check back very soon for some killer cookies and yummy cupcakes. You couldn't keep me away.

This week in baking: Grape Nuts (preview edition)

So I've been having a Grape Nuts craving, but since I usually get tired of them long before they go stale (and then they, um, go stale), I decided to get preemptive and concoct some Grape Nuts baked goods, including vegan strawberry cereal bars and a very Daring Custard Caper. Stay tuned to this space to see what delicious Grapey-Nutty yummies I come up with!

The other reason for baking in the relative heat of July is that I heard a horrible story from my mother this morning. Seems that while she was putting away the delicious peach pie we had at her July 4th barbeque, the pie plate slipped from her hands, shattering the dish and laying waste to all those hand-peeled peaches and the perfect, flaky, homemade crust. So I wanted to bring something yummy and not-too-bad-for-you to her when I see her next, to help ease the pie-related trauma. Here is a picture of the pie, taken by my friend Styrous, before it met its doom:


In the meantime, check out this recipe for Peanut Butter & Jelly Tart (with graham cracker crust, I might add) that I found on Epicurious while I was looking up other people's Grape Nuts experiments for inspiration in my own. It contains no Grape Nuts cereal, but the words "grape" and "nut" appear in the recipe, so it showed up in the results of my searching. If I were gonna make this tart, I'd tweak it a little (for instance, I'd try seasonal berries & homemade jam instead of grape jelly & Concords). Anyone else feel like giving it a go?

P.S. I can't help it -- I'm also making Wheat Free Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies for a certain Birthday Boy I know... Mmm... cookies...

Update: (Sunday afternoon) I went to three different grocery stores, and there were no Grape Nuts to be found! To be fair, I wasn't expecting Trader Joe's or Whole Foods to stock them (I was right), but when I went to Andronico's they didn't have any on the shelf, and the employees were incredibly unhelpful. My mission continues tomorrow, when I try a fourth store and hope that the universe stops thwarting me at every turn. At least it gives me an excuse to keep buying wine -- everyone has such good deals! So as a consequence, my wine rack is completely full.

This could be the most amazing cake I've ever seen, ever.

Courtesy of Flickr, which has tons more close up photos that make my inner pastry chef wickedly jealous. Touché, Beth at Let Them Eat Cake. Touché.