It's my 6th Blogiversary!

 

It's my 6th Blogiversary and I've had a lot of fun making so many different recipes! I wasn't too organized this summer so I don't have a special recipe to share today, but I wanted to thank my readers over the years. I'm already planning my fall and Christmas baking and I can't wait for the seasons to change and the prime time for baking to begin.

~Nicole

Brown Sugar Pound Cake with Caramel Glaze

Photo from

http://nikarella.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/flannel-friday-five-birthday-candles/

It’s my 5^th Blogiversary! I didn’t really know when I started my blog all those years ago, as a way to share my baking with people, that I would still be going 5 years later, 710 posts later. I have to admit that this summer has been a little hard to keep a regular blogging schedule, with the weather being so warm and not as many people to bake for! But I think the weather has finally started to turn towards fall and I am super excited for fall baking!

When deciding what to bake to celebrate, I decided to bake to bake what I wanted to bake. What do I enjoy most? I love all the cookies I make, but I wanted to make something a bit fancier. And for that type of occasion I almost always turn to a Bundt cake. And I chose one with flavors I love (flavors of fall!): caramel, brown sugar, pecans, and toffee. 

Like all Bundt cakes, this comes together with little fuss. It is a big cake though! My cake stuck to the pan a little bit, just like Sheryl’s did on the original post. I, too, just stuck it back together and covered it with caramel. It looked great. Even though the library is closed right now because we’re between academic quarters, I took this to work to celebrate with all my friends!

Brown Sugar Pound Cake with Caramel Glaze

1-1/2 cups butter, softened

2 cups brown sugar, packed

1 cup sugar

5 eggs

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup milk

8 ounce bag of toffee bits

1 cup pecans, chopped

14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk

1 cup brown sugar, packed

2 tablespoons butter

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Make the cake: Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter and flour a 12 cup Bundt pan.

In a large mixer bowl, cream the butter until smooth. Add the brown sugar and sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating for one minute after each addition.

In a bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the flour mixture, alternating with the milk, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Stir in the toffee bits and pecans. Spread the batter evenly in the prepared pan.

Bake for 1 hour 20 minutes to 1 hour 30 minutes, until a thin knife inserted in the cake comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 30 minutes. Remove from the pan and allow to cool completely on the wire rack before topping with the caramel glaze.

Make the caramel drizzle: in a medium saucepan combine the sweetened condensed milk and brown sugar. Bring to a boil over medium high heat, whisking constantly. Reduce heat and whisk constantly for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and whisk in the butter and vanilla. Drizzle over the cooled cake while the caramel is warm.

Recipe from Lady Behind the Curtain

Battenberg Cake

 

It’s my 4^th blogiversary! I wanted to make something to celebrate and I’ve always wanted to make a Battenberg Cake so I decided to challenge myself! Besides, the Battenberg cake has the 4 pieces of cake that form a checkerboard, so that is fitting for the 4^th anniversary of my blog. I found this recipe on BBC Good Food’s website and gave it a go.

For the Battenberg, you make two cakes, an almond cake and a vanilla cake tinted with pink food coloring. I’ve seen different variations where you bake the two cakes in the same pan, the batters divided with parchment paper. This recipe has you make 2 separate cakes; I chose to make them in the same pan so that I would have a better chance at cakes of equal sizes. Well, my pink cake was all domed and beautiful and the almond cake was kind of flat in the middle. They use the same method to mix so I don’t know why they were so different.

I used almonds with the skin for the ground almonds, so my almond cake didn’t have a super delicate texture. This cake is a little tricky to get all the pieces the same size. I had to do some trimming to get everything square, and it wasn’t perfectly square in the end. But that’s ok. It was my first try! I bought two packages of marzipan but you really only use about one total, so I have some marzipan left over to use another day. These cakes are really quite simple, and the different colors and the checkerboard pattern are more for show than for taste. Still, I was pretty happy with my cake and I look forward to all the recipes I will be trying in the coming years!

Battenberg Cake

6 ounces butter, room temperature

6 ounces sugar

5 ounces self-rising flour*

1.5 ounces ground almonds

½ teaspoon baking powder

3 eggs

½ teaspoon vanilla

¼ teaspoon almond extract

6 ounces butter, room temperature

6 ounces sugar

5 ounces self-rising flour

1.5 ounces ground almonds

½ teaspoon baking powder

3 eggs

½ teaspoon vanilla

Pink food color

1 cup apricot jam

Two 7 ounce packages marzipan

Powdered sugar

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8-inch square baking pan with parchment and spray with cooking spray.

Make the almond cake: put the butter, sugar, flour, ground almonds, baking powder, eggs, vanilla and almond extract in a large mixer bowl. Beat until the mix comes together smoothly. Spread the batter in the pan and smooth the top. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes and then remove from the pan to a wire rack to finish cooling while you make the second cake.

Make the pink cake: reline the cake pan with parchment. Beat all the ingredients in a large mixer bowl until smooth. Spread in the prepared pan and bake for 25-30 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan and then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

To assemble, heat the jam until runny, then strain. Roughly measure the height of the cake, then cut 4 slices each the same width as the sponge height. Repeat with pink cake.

Take 2 almond slices and 2 pink slices and trim so they are all the same length. Roll out one marzipan piece on a surface lightly dusted with powdered sugar to just over 8 inches wide, then keep rolling lengthways until the marzipan is roughly ¼ inch thick. Brush the marzipan with apricot jam, then lay a pink and an almond slice side by side at one end of the marzipan, brushing jam in between to stick the cakes. Brush more jam on top of the cakes, then sandwich remaining 2 slices on top, alternating colors to give a checkerboard effect. Trim the marzipan to the length of the cakes.

Carefully lift up the marzipan and smooth over the cake with your hands, and crimp the marzipan to seal in the cake. Trim to make the ends neat. Assemble the second Battenberg with the remaining cake pieces.

Recipe from BBC Good Food

*I make my own self-rising flour by combining 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon baking soda, and ½ teaspoon salt.

Happy 3rd Blogiversary!

It’s by Third Blogiversary! I’m so happy that so many people drop by and are able to share the different treats that I make. To celebrate, I’ve made three variations of snickerdoodles: my favorite cookie! I’ll post the three over the next three days. First up: snickerdoodle cupcakes!

I’ve long had a handful of snickerdoodle cupcake and muffin recipes bookmarked, and it was really tough to figure out which one to try. I opted for Martha Stewart’s recipe because I’ve had good luck with her recipes and the recipe was quite simple. I didn’t make the seven minute frosting that her recipe called for, I instead opted for a version of the traditional buttercream frosting that I use all the time. This version has cinnamon and also meringue powder, which gives it a little something extra.

These cupcakes have a great cinnamon sugar flavor! They don’t quite have the same tang that snickerdoodles do, but I can’t really complain. I took these to work and shared them with my colleagues and some of our student workers and they were gone in a very short time. How can you go wrong with something so delicious?

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup cake flour, sifted
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
5 ounces milk
Cinnamon sugar, for finishing

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin tins with paper liners. This makes about 14 cupcakes.

In a small bowl, combine flours, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. In a large mixer bowl on medium-high speed, cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated. Beat in vanilla. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of milk, and beating until combined after each.

Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Cool in the tins for about 5 minutes and then remove the cupcakes to a wire rack to cool completely. When cooled, frost with snickerdoodle frosting and, if desired, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.

Snickerdoodle Frosting

½ cup butter, at room temperature
3 1/2 cups sifted powdered sugar
3 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1-1/2 teaspoons meringue powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon

In a large mixer bowl, beat butter until creamy - about 2-3 minutes. Add sifted powdered sugar, milk, vanilla, meringue powder and cinnamon and beat until combined. Add more powdered sugar or milk to get the desired consistency. Spread or pipe frosting onto cooled cupcakes.

Cupcake recipe from Martha Stewart
Frosting recipe from Mermaid Sweets

Happy 2nd Blogiversary!

It's the Cookies on Friday second blogiversary! I want to thank all of my followers for keeping me company the past two years and I look forward to many more baking adventures.

Happy First Blogiversary!

Today's the first anniversary of my blog! I've enjoyed baking and sharing with you for the past year. I've made some changes to the look of the blog and I hope that everyone likes the new and revamped Cookies on Friday.