Strawberry Cake

My paternal family is somewhat of a mess. There were 4 boys and a girl in the family and not many of my cousins or myself were raised by our parents on that side of the family be they our father or mother. We had wonderful great-grandparents that worked really hard at creating a family environment for us but they were both gone by the time I was 19 and many of my cousins were very young or not even born before then. 

I have been thinking about my great-grandmother a lot lately and missing her...her name was Zola and she would be very sad about the state of this family. I have kicked up my efforts to try to re-connect with my cousins and create a family for our children in the past months. Many of my cousins are interested in this for themselves and/or their children.

One of my cousin's children was turing 13 on the 13th of this month and it seemed like an ideal opportunity to get together. I am hoping these get togethers grow in number of family members that come! 

I, of course, wanted to do an awesome cake. I wish I had been doing this when Hannah turned 13 or even MacKenzie. I started all these "roses" cakes because I have been planning this cake for months! I needed to see if I could do it at all...these roses are seriously easy!

I have to confess, I did even a worse job of picture taking (none during the process) because my 19 month old nephew was keeping me company and I was a bit nervous about this icing...I was distracted!

I wanted to make this strawberry cake so bad and had been planning it...the recipe calls for strawberry puree and I have strawberries that I put in the freezer at the end of the summer, this is the perfect use for them!

I realized when I pulled up the recipe on my ZipList and had been debating what icing to use. I am chomping at the bit to do a chocolate cake with chocolate icing so I wondered about chocolate icing on this but was afraid that it would overpower the strawberry in the cake. So I decided on a strawberry swiss meringue buttercream recipe that I had found.

Strawberry Birthday Cake with Strawberry Swiss Meringue Butter Cream Icing

This cake was AMAZING! I also forgot to take a picture of the inside. I used 8 inch pans and made it three layer. I used my icing bag to pipe the icing between layers. I used white chocolate melting candy to make the "M."

What I will do differently next time: The icing was wonderful but a bit too buttery for me (no wonder with the amount of butter in it) I think that I will do half light cream cheese and half butter and see how that goes. 

It turned out beautiful! I think this was my best cake yet!

Cherry Rose Cake

I am so into baking right now. I just love every bit of it...the measuring, mixing, trying new things and having this beautiful creation at the end that everyone enjoys.

At work there is a group of us that goes out to lunch to celebrate birthdays. My boss had her birthday last week and was on vacation so the plan was that we would go out to lunch this past Monday. This is the first birthday lunch that we have had since my new obsession has really taken root. 

I called my friend from work and asked what she thought about me baking a cake to bring to lunch. She thought it was a good idea and that our boss would like it. I was SOO excited!

I spent last Thursday evening looking through the recipes that I have been collecting for cakes...looking for one that I couldn't wait to try and then I found Buttermilk Cupcakes with Cherry Icing...DING DING DING! Winner!!


This recipe is wonderful. The cake gets it's cherry flavor from chopped frozen cherries and it has a nice pinkish color (I am still not great at taking pictures of the whole process...I will get better). I made the cake as directed with no changes.

The icing was another story. It gets it's cherry flavor from cherry brandy (yum!). However, this is a work lunch and it feels wrong to pour liquor into this icing. I spent a long time thinking over what to use to replace it and decided on really good cherry preserves 4 TBS (I put them in the food processor and blended them well).

Remnant Cherry Preserves

So now I have this really beautiful pink icing. With little flecks of cherries in it.

Beautiful Pink Icing with Cherry Flakes!

I have a problem though...it tastes like cherry powdered sugar. I don't like too much of a powdered sugar taste to the icing. So I decide to throw in a bar of cream cheese and 2 tsp almond extract. Oh my, this is delicious. Next time I will split the butter in half and do half cream cheese and I will double the almond extract to bring out more of a cherry almond flavor (OH! and I will DEFINITELY be adding the cherry brandy with the cherry preserves).

What to do with the rest of the cherry preserves? I decided to put some in between the layers of cake...BUT it started running off the cake! I though I had really made a mistake I slapped on some icing and started trying to mix it up (next time I will mix it with icing first and then put it on). I had to put the other layer on it and it and use my icing bag to "caulk" it up!

I was really scared about this time.

I then decided to make the top look like one big rose!

A Single Rose

I really need a spinning cake decorating stand!

I HATE writing on cakes...I never get it right and so, I decided to play around with something else. I used white chocolate candy melts and used a squeeze bottle to make letters until they came out decently. I then just pressed them into the icing and I love the look that I got with this cake!

I really like the way it turned out!

It was a HUGE hit at work...everyone loved it!

I think that next time the bottom of the letters will get chocolate "stands."

This recipe is a KEEPER!!!

Homemade Granola

I have a friend who owns a bakery in Indianapolis at the City Market...Circle City Sweets and she makes, hands down, the BEST granola ever! Her name is Cindy Hawkins and she is the most AMAZING baker ever! She also makes lots of other goodies that are so worth stopping by the City Market and picking up! Circle City Sweets can also be found at many summer markets and they are open at the Indy Winter Farmer's Market, which is now located at the city market.

I crave her granola all the time. This blog is new but I hope it is becoming clear that I like to make things for myself. I like to try things and I like to control what is in what I eat...failing that, I support local businesses like Cindy's and I love to go the local markets and support local farmers.

So, I have been wanting to try making granola for myself as I wanted to maximize the amount of fiber and reduce the amount of sugar in it and still have it taste wonderful. I also want to save money and eat well. I found a recipe for granola and I have doctored it to have the most fiber that I can get and guess what? It's WONDERFUL!!

I left the liquids the way the were listed in the recipe:

• 1/3 cup of honey (I used Sourwood...my favorite!)
• 1/3 cup of maple syrup (I want to buy local and have on hand next time)
• 1 tsp good vanilla extract (think next time I will add the insides from a vanilla bean as well)
• 1/4 tsp real almond extract
• 1/3 cup of oil (I used Smart Balance...good fats!)

Liquids

Here is the Granola recipe that I based my granola on. I changed out the dried fruit that it called for for figs and prunes...both of which I love and contain lots of fiber!

• highest fiber oatmeal that I could find 
• flax seeds instead of ground flax and upped it to more like 8-10 tablespoons
• 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour
• 3/4 cup of almonds
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• figs (I used a whole package)
• prunes (I used a whole package)

Other ingredients.

I mixed the two together...I was concerned that if I dumped the liquids in that I would have difficulty getting them mixed well...don't worry, it mixes easily.

Mixing the two, it smells heavenly.

I put the granola in the oven at 300 degrees but split into two batches and baked for 45 minutes and took it out every 15 minutes to stir it well until it was done.

Sorry, it's a bit blurry.

The recipe said until dry and I was a bit worried that it was still not completely dry. I let it cool on the cookie sheet and continued mixing it and it dried out nicely while cooling.

I wound up with a gallon size baggie about 3/4 full...that's a LOT of granola. I estimate that I spent about $15 making it. I am sold on making my own granola to go with my homemade yogurt. I am really excited to eat things I made myself all weekend.

Don't get me wrong...I will still need to have Cindy's granola once in awhile!!