82/99: Golden Lemon Almond Cake

I feel really behind on my cakes.

After this one, I have another one that I haven't posted yet so that means I have 16 cakes to make in the next 48 days. I'm getting a little worried because I'll be gone for spring break and I have midterms coming up. But I am going to make it.  I am determined.  I set a goal and I am going to meet it- no extension or exceptions.

I think my problem is that I'm getting a little sick of it.  I absolutely love it when I'm doing it but I think it's the planning part that I don't like- grocery store trips, prepping, mixing, baking, cooling, cleaning, photographing, blogging. Add that to 18 hours of upper level courses and my to do list gets pretty long.  But i'll stop complaining... no one wants to hear that. On to the cake:

81/99: Double Chocolate Valentine

 

Happy Valentines Day!!

Tonight, my friends and I celebrated my dear friend Anna's birthday AND Valentines Day at our favorite restaurant in Oxford, Snack Bar. We were definitely that table on Valentines night with eleven girls making all the noise.  The rest of the restaurant was littered with couples so we may have stood out a little bit.

 I had the Rabbit au Vin with a side of Parmesan Truffle Fries. I think if I could eat there every day I would.

To top off the night, we had the double chocolate valentine cake.  I made the cake yesterday but it ended up taking forever because we were all watching the Bachelor and hating on Courtney the whole time.

79/99: White Velvet Butter Cupcakes and 80/99: Golden Neoclassic Buttercream

Happy Super Bowl!

Honestly, I'm not a huge super bowl person. The only one I've ever watched fully was the Saints game and that rocked. I asked today who was playing and I was told that we're rooting for the Giants. Of course we go for any team with a Manning (go Rebs) so go Giants!

These cupcakes were really good. They are really light and easy to eat (maybe that's a bad thing). They went over really well.

Note: There are two recipes in the book for white velvet butter cakes but one is a cake and one is for the cupcakes. I already made the white velvet butter cake but I made it in a cupcake pan- this is the actual cupcake recipe so that's why it counts as two different recipes.

78/99: Hungarian Jancsi Torta: A slice and a scandal

Belgians, Royalty, Gypsies, Hungarians, Scandal, Chocolate, Walnuts:  the words that come to mind when describing this cake. I love that the cake comes with a story... and I also love that the two are equally as good.

77/99: Sicilian Pistachio Cake

Surprise of my day: I actually like this cake. I'm getting down to the cakes that I am not incredibly excited about (fruitcake, quail egg cake, etc) and this one was no exception.  But I think I wasn't as excited about this cake because of this confession: I've never had a pistachio before this.  I am a recovering picky eater so in the past, I looked at them and thought "strange looking green vegetable looking nut" and so I've never been tempted to try it.  As a curious baker and an adventurous eater though, I tried one as I was shelling them and surprise surprise, they were tasty.

One of my friends commented as I was making the cake that she heard that pistachios are the most unhealthy nut that you can eat.  But, thankfully, she was wrong (sorry to whoever said that but fear not, I won't name you).  I looked it up and according to my extra-credible source, Shape.com (I hope that you're catching my sarcasm here), pistachios are actually one of the top five most healthy nuts that you can eat.  They are high in cholesterol-lowering plant sterols (I don't know what that means but I like it) and have more potassium than most nuts.  Hooray!

76/99: Fruitcake Wreath

Yeah, so the best part of the picture is the fruit. And by fruit I mean the kind that is not in the cake.

When I started with the fruit filling my dad walked in and asked what I was making.  I told him a fruit cake. This was his response (I wrote it down):

"You're making a fruitcake? That's not something someone your age would do...  That's something my grandmother would do. Oh, she was a teetotaler. She didn't drink a drop in her life but we all knew there was somethin' in that fruitcake.  When she died we found a big bottle of rum hidden behind a door.  I guess that's why she made so much fruitcake..."

Oh dad.

a little bit of everything

 

 

Last night I got a bit more bold and ordered five desserts for dinner. It was an Italian themed dinner so the feature for dessert was of course the tiramisu.  Sorry, Royal Caribbean, I think I’ve had better.  The raspberry jelly looking thing was probably the best!

Other than trying different kinds of dessert, I’ve also been attending every wine tasting that the ship offers.  Yesterday was a French tasting featuring LaFite reserve from the Bordeaux, Medoc, and Pauillac regions. We had several cheeses to try with each pairing in order to see which one we liked the best.  It was appropriate for yesterday because sadly it rained all day long.

Right now we are in St. Thomas and for some reason there is a man playing the bagpipe right outside of my window…. I think that means its time for me to go somewhere else. More details on the trip later!

I'll have all of them please

 

Strawberry Cheesecake

 

 Cherry Cake

No, I didn't make these desserts.

But if you go on a cruise any time soon and see the sentence "One dessert per guest please" on a menu, I might be the customer who ruined it for everyone.  I would say sorry about that to you but I'm really not. Here's why:

One of my new years resolutions can be summarized in the question, “why not?” It’s been a great resolution so far as its gotten me to Memphis for New Years and Chicago for a good time with friends (hence my lack of posting lately).  This week, my “why not” resolution manifests itself in a different way.

75/99: Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake

I love foreign food and the fact that this recipe is Swedish made it even more exciting.  Rose says that "the pear adds luscious moisture to the crumb; the almond cream imbues it with lovely flavor." I think that she very eloquently and accurately described the cake.  It wasn't an overwhelming flavor nor was it bland.  It was a simple, sweet taste that was enhanced by the moisture in the cake.

I don't plan ahead very well when it comes to making cakes. I just open the book, pick a recipe, and open the pantry or the groery store.  This one called for almond paste. Almond paste is $15.99 from Amazon and no telling how much at the grocery store, if they even carry it.  Noooo thankyou.

So with my hefty stash of nuts (whole, sliced, and slivered almonds, pistachios, walnuts, pecans, etc) I pulled out a bag of slivered almonds and got busy making the almond paste.  Since I had all the ingredients handy, I like to think that I saved 16 bucks.  Totally worth it.  I got the recipe from allrecipes.com so if you need some almond cream, take an extra five minutes and save yourself some cash. Here's the recipe:

74/99: Chocolate Layer Cake with Caramel Ganache

I've been looking forward to this cake and at the same time dreading this cake. I love caramel and I love dark chocolate but, as I've mentioned many many times before, I DETEST making caramel. My caramel batting average usually fits into the "third time's a charm" category. I can never get it right on the first try.