Baked Sunday Mornings: Mile-High Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Buttercream
By definition, a recipe with the words ‘mile-high’ and ‘chocolate’ in the title really couldn’t be anything but mind-blowing; at the very least, it certainly got my attention. I had been really looking forward to the Mile-High Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Buttercream from Baked Elements on the Baked Sunday Mornings schedule for some time, and […]
Baked Sunday Mornings: Oopsy Daisy Cake (aka Milk Chocolate-Peanut Butter Cake)
I finally did it. Good god. After a number of failed, frustrated, and expletive-filled efforts, I finally made BAKED‘s buttercream frosting right on the first try! This frosting has inspired rage in my soul and a near-attempt to throw my beloved mixer over the balcony, but it is SO. DAMN. GOOD… I just couldn’t give up. […]
Not TCHO Mama’s Chocolate: San Francisco Pastry Crawl (Part 3 ½)
On Day 3 of my recent San Francisco Pastry Crawl, my first stop was the TCHO Chocolate Factory, which I had been very eager to visit for quite some time. As I started writing about it, I realized that my original blog post (recounting my visits to several other sugary establishments) would be irritatingly long, so […]
Baked Sunday Mornings: Mississippi Mud Pie (aka Muddy Mississippi Cake)
I’ve had over a month of pretty successful baking (no disasters!), including three awesome baking jobs– even a wedding! However, I felt like something was missing in my baking life… Was it my imperfect lemon curd? Was it the marshmallows that oozed out of my Cornflake-Marshmallow Cookies? Or was it just my Walking Dead Season […]
Baked Sunday Mornings: Malted Madeleines
“And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and […]
Tastes Like Luck: Chocolate Shamrock Sandwich Cookies
Got luck? I love shamrocks. They make me happy– any time of year, really. The symbol of the shamrock is of course associated with Ireland today, and has come to be synonymous with St. Patrick’s Day. The word comes from the Irish-Gaelic seamróg, meaning “little clover”. Legend has it that St. Patrick used this 3-leaf […]
Cutting Full Circle: Chocolate Disks
I am forever searching for new ideas to decorate cupcakes. Some may say, a little obsessively. (Don’t judge.) I saw this idea in the Butch Bakery cookbook, which is *highly* underrated, by the way– every recipe I’ve made from that book has been awesome. This is a New York City delivery-based bakery that makes “cupcakes […]
Ode to the Emerald Isle: Chocolate Irish Cream Cupcakes
I have a love affair with Ireland. Anything Irish– people, history, folklore, language, music– something about this culture resonates in my soul. It’s been that way since I was a teenager, when I attended college in Boston and worked for a small company of Irish pubs. Boston itself has a rich Irish history and character, […]
Baked Sunday Mornings: Vanilla Bean & Chocolate Budino
I love me some Italian food, like most sane, interesting people who have a soul. Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about pasta, pizza, and many other aspects of this succulent cuisine, but I admit that when I first looked at the title of this week’s Baked Sunday Mornings recipe for Vanilla Bean & Chocolate Budino, […]
Sealed with a Kiss: Chocolate Heart, X & O Cakes
The symbols of X & O representing kisses and hugs are of course among the most recognizable symbols associated with love and, by extension, Valentine’s Day. I never really knew where this came from, though I assumed that the letters simply resembled their corresponding affectionate gesture: X looks somewhat like puckered lips, and O looks […]