Browsing the archives for the dessert tag.

Crumble Jumble Cake with Moonlight Frosting

Domestic, Kids

My littles love to tear it up in the kitchen, and I love to watch them. Sometimes their creations are a little sketchy but they are usually pretty good when they follow a recipe! This recipe is in one of their favorite library books, The Little Bitty Bakery by Leslie Muir and Betsy Lewin.

Essentially, this book is about an elephant baker who bakes all kinds of sweet treats but doesn’t realize until the day is done that she baked right through her birthday and didn’t celebrate it! The mice in her bakery all pitch in and gather crumbs and bits of treats to make her a birthday cake (hilarious how something so unsanitary is adorable in a children’s book). I can’t say for sure if it’s the glitter on the cover, or the sing-song rhyme of the text (here’s an adorable example ‘they scuttled to a huddle / prepared a secret plan / & launched a luscious mission / inside a brioche pan’), but my girls love this book. We first took it out of the library one day last fall when we were exploring libraries outside of our district and we ended up getting library cards in that district that day to take it out (the way the library system is down here is so weird that we actually have library cards in three different districts, even though they are all super close to us).

Since then, we have taken the book out three more times in the other two districts – and renewed again this week. Clearly, I need to just buy this book for them! The recipe for the crumble jumble cake is at the back of the book and was so weird I wasn’t sure it was actually going to work. There are a few mismeasured ingredients (duh, the bakers are 7 and 4), but really, it came out pretty well.

Crumble Jumble Cake

Crumble Jumble Cake via The Little Bitty Bakery

1 stick unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar
5 large eggs
1 cup chocolate syrup
1 teaspoon pure vanilla
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch salt
1 cup flour

Moonlight Frosting via The Little Bitty Bakery

1 stick salted butter
3/4 cup confectioner’s sugar
6 tablespoons marshmallow fluff
1 teaspoon vanilla
1-2 tablespoons half and half

The cake is fairly simple, first cream the butter and sugar and then beat in the eggs one at a time. Slowly add the chocolate syrup (this is when I stopped and checked the book again because I just couldn’t believe it), vanilla, cinnamon and salt. Bake at 325 for 45 minutes and voila!

The frosting is crazy simple too and it’s especially cute if you’ve read the book. <3 Just whip it all together in your stand up mixer and you're good to go. Once the cake has been baked, cooled and frosted, the real fun begins! This is where the ‘crumble jumble’ aspect comes in.

The real beauty is you can use whatever you know your friends and family will love! I chopped up a few Twix bars, some Butterfinger Bites, M&Ms, mini chocolate chips, broken cookies, jellybeans and chopped walnuts. When I showed up at my girl Jillian’s house with this (and another epic cake I’ll post about tomorrow) her response was ‘omg what are you doing?!’, of course I just replied, ‘I know, right?’ Don’t worry, we didn’t eat it all!

Crumble Jumble Cake Crumble Jumble Cake
Crumble Jumble Cake
Crumble Jumble Cake
Crumble Jumble Cake
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Easter Bunny Cake Pops

Domestic, Kids

I. Love. Easter.

I know, I know. I love Valentine’s Day and Halloween and Christmas too. So what? I love to bake for my littles and their buddies and craft like a kid and any excuse for a party of small people makes me incredibly happy. My goal this year is to find the time to blog about it all!

My husband found some pastel candy corn while out running errands and knew I’d be able to use them for ‘something cute’. He was right, naturally!

Technically, cake pops are made by mashing frosting into cake and shaping into balls before poking sticks in the ends and dipping in melted chocolate. Lately, I have been using my Babycakes Cake Pop Maker and then poking a stick in and dipping in chocolate. This time around though, I felt that it called for ‘traditional’ cake pops and I went with mashing frosting into cake for the right texture.

The pastel candy corn of course ended up being used as their cute little ears. I used individual sprinkles and my serious kitchen tweezers for the eyes and little butterfly sprinkles for their noses. You can really use whatever you want as decoration for the bunnies as long as you get a basic bunny shape. If you’re feeling especially adventurous you can always make some cake pops and invite the kids to decorate them with you!

We were passing them out to school friends so we wrapped them up. I think I will make another batch to spread some Easter joy in our neighborhood!

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Peanut Butter Tofu Ice Cream

Healthy

This is a great recipe for people who avoid dairy on the regular and need a chemical-free alternative to ice cream. It’s also a great recipe for people who don’t avoid dairy but are dieting! I wont give an official calorie count for this recipe because it can change a lot depending on what kind of peanut butter / tofu / sweetener you use.

Even if you’re not a fan of tofu, this recipe is amazing. I started experimenting with tofu in desserts last year thanks to Peas and Thank You, and this was a winner too!

It all happens in the food processor and if you have teeny tiny little containers like these it measures out to about 100 calories per serving!

Peanut Butter Tofu Ice Cream

13.5 oz package of silken tofu
4 tablespoons organic chunky peanut butter (can be smooth if you don’t want peanut chunks)
2/3 cup agave / maple syrup / Joseph’s Original Sugar Free Maple Syrup <- that's what I used 1 medium ripe banana Blend it all together in the food processor and divide it into 10 servings. Freeze overnight and voila! It gets harder than regular ice cream, so take it out a little before you want to eat it and let it warm up and melt a bit. So good. Even if you end up having more than one, it's still a lot less calories than a bowl of ice cream.

Peanut Butter Tofu Ice Cream
Peanut Butter Tofu 'Ice Cream'
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Thanksgiving Rewind

California, Domestic, Kids, Marriage

So as I mentioned about eleventy billion times last month, we took a road trip out to Las Vegas to celebrate our first American Thanksgiving with our dear friend Nichole and her four children! She is originally from the south and I am..well, I’m me, so we went all out. Our Vegas adventure was short and sweet. We drove out after dinner on Wenesday, checked into Circus Circus, did some late night wandering around the hotel and went to bed alarmingly late. Fun! We had an incredibly lazy Thanksgiving morning, much to Nichole’s dismay, but we did have a fantastic evening together once we finally got there!

The whole menu is pretty crazy, but it was a lot of fun and there were 11 of us total. We had to leave all the leftovers with her (sorry!!), but there are 5 of them so that made sense anyway! She made a lovely turkey with stuffing and gravy, she and her wee ones also made the cranberry sauce, ham, pinto beans, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes and green bean casserole. I brought my very first sweet potato pie, apple crumble, cocoa brownies for the kids and my trio of tarts; lemon meringue, pumpkin and Sailor Jerry pecan (and of course my cherry apron and matching headband – essential items).

I’m linking to three recipes I just put up on the site from that day. They are all equally bananas-amazing.


Lemon meringue has been one of my husband’s favorite pies since we met so I have a lot of practice with this, and I’ve tried a few different recipes over the years but this has been the absolute best one. (read)

These are another piece of the trifecta of awesome that was my tart collection at our first American Thanksgiving. Half a dozen are made without any run and the other half are spiked with Sailor Jerry. (read)
Sweet Potato Pie
Sweet Potato Pie
It sounds typical to say I’m from Canada and I’ve never had sweet potato pie, but I think it’s just all in who you know and my exposure to Southern Belles up to this point has been pretty limited. However, I spent Thanksgiving this year with a real life Southern Gal, and she put me in charge of the sweet potato pie – she even gave me her Granny’s recipe. (read)

On Friday, we picked three of the zillion things there are to do in Vegas with kids and each of them was a hit.

First we just went downstairs to The Adventuredome in Circus Circus. As the name implies, it’s an indoor amusement park, and it’s way bigger than this Canuk remembered from my own childhood! Like, woah. We wanted to get to make sure we got to do all three things before we headed home so we let the kids each pick a couple of rides and away we went! Please note there are very few actual horses on the carousel. Wee One #2 picked the dragon and Wee One #3 picked the flying bunny. There were also flying bears and pigs. I honestly thought that was pretty rad.

We are all a little in love with Vegas and we’re all eager to go back again. This was our first road trip since we moved to LA and I have to be honest, it feels pretty amazing to come home to California. Like, taking a vacation from vacation!

Our next stop was The Silverton to check out the aquarium and the mermaid that was rumored to hang out there. While we waited for her to make her entrance, we saw a leopard print sting ray. What?? We spent some time this summer with Wee One #3’s Godmother, exploring the aquarium in Long Beach and we got to see a lot of sting rays but I had no idea that leopard print sting rays existed! So cool!
The chocolate factory was a must do because every year for years and years and years, going back before I can remember and ending when my granny started getting ‘the old’, my aunt went to Vegas every year with either her girlfriends or her sister in laws or nieces or all of the above. Every single time she came back, she’d bring us Ethel M chocolates. It only felt fitting for us to hit the chocolate factory and pick her up a box of Ethel M chocolate. The kids thought it was pretty cool to see where M&Ms come from, though I’m sure this is not the only place they are made!

This picture is hilarious to me and really sums up where they are right now. Wee Ones #2 & 3 are crazy and hyper and delightfully insane. Wee One #1? Well, he’s 12 now so he’s not about to get into shenanigans with them ON CAMERA, but trust me, he is just as delightfully insane as they are. πŸ˜‰

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Lazy Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake

Domestic

I know it’s Wednesday, but my Work in Progress is a pile of puffs, strikingly similar to the pile of puffs you’ve seen repeatedly this summer (I’ve knitted about 130 or so since we moved to LA). Sockdown starts on Saturday and there will be some furious knitting happening for about a year after that. Don’t ask me where Christmas knitting fits with furious sock knitting (unless everyone gets socks for Christmas). πŸ˜‰

So instead I will give you this, the easiest, dirtiest (in a ‘this is defo not health food’ kind of way), laziest recipe I’ve ever made. It’s so lazy, I felt guilty making it. No really, I totally did.

Lazy Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake

Lazy Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake via – I’m a Lazy Mom

1 box yellow or white cake mix (use Trader Joe’s mix or organic mix from Whole Foods to feel slightly less awful)
2 eggs beaten (Omega eggs, at least!)
5 tablespoons melted butter (I used vegan butter, which I know means NOTHING when applied to this recipe)
2 cups M&M’s or mini chocolate chips (I chopped up a big bar of dark chocolate for this).

You literally just mix it all up and pour it into a (greased) 9 x 13 inch pan and bake at 350 for 20 minutes. I feel like an asshole for even sharing this recipe. But it’s one of those awful, awful things that my kids love! There wasn’t any left for my husband when he got home!

Lazy Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake
Lazy Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake
Lazy Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake
Lazy Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake
They are addicting because they have the texture of a cookie with the moistness of a cake and of course chocolate chip make everything tastier!
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Butter Tarts (So Very Canadian)

Domestic

I made these little gems for Canada Day this year and then again a few weeks ago for my husband to take to work with him. Butter Tarts are extremely common in Canada, and not just in an ‘everyone’s Grandmother made them’ kind of way (though everyone’s Grandmother did make them). They are in bakeries and grocery stores all over the country. Then once you take a step into the States, people are all ‘what the hell are Butter Tarts?!’

So I feel the need to make the best butter tarts there ever were in order to educate all our new American friends about Canadian pastry. πŸ˜‰ The best way to describe Butter Tarts to the uninitiated would be that it is very similar to the base of the typical pecan pie minus the pecans. Sort of gooey, but it holds itself together and is very-to-extremely sweet.

Butter Tarts (So Very Canadian)

Butter Tarts

*your favorite pie crust pastry
1/3 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup half-and-half cream
1/2 cup raisins or chopped nuts (pecans or walnuts) I didn’t add any

Butter Tarts (So Very Canadian)
Butter Tarts (So Very Canadian)
Preheat oven to 375. Prep your pie crust and line a tray of muffin cups with it. Then cream together the butter and brown sugar.
Butter Tarts (So Very Canadian)
Butter Tarts (So Very Canadian)
Add eggs and half & half cream to the mixture and continue mixing for a 3-5 minutes. Then pout into your prepared tart shells.
Butter Tarts (So Very Canadian)
Butter Tarts (So Very Canadian)
Bake for 15-20 minutes, check on it after 15 minutes. The filling with cook quickly, you’re looking for the pie crust to brown.
Butter Tarts (So Very Canadian)
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Congo Bars

Domestic

These little treats are almost a brownie, almost cakey in texture but are chocolate chip cookie all the way in flavor. Which of course means my kids love them – brownie, cake and chocolate chip cookie all at once? Oh! That actually gives me an idea for later! Ahem. These Congo Bars take maaaybe 5 minutes to get in the oven, 7 if you have a toddler pulling at your skirt and like 20 if your toddler insists on helping. I do my best to let the kids help when they ask to because some of my favorite times with my parents and my grandparents were in the kitchen with a mound of flour on the floor and dough in my hair. Thanks guys!!

No small talk for you today, it’s Day 7 (of 17) of the 2012 Ravellenic Games and I’m only 0.13% through my first event, the Modular Relay (puffs for my blanket) and I’d really like to do more than one event. So whip up a batch of these, and get knitting! πŸ™‚

Congo Bars – via Six Sisters Stuff (adapted from Bakerella

2 3/4 cup flour
2 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup butter, softened
2 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups milk chocolate chips
1 c. chopped pecans (I made these for the kids & they weren’t feeling the nuts)

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt and then set aside. Cream the butter and the sugars, then add one egg at a time, then the vanilla. Once that’s all incorporated, mix in the flour and then fold in the chocolate chips (and nuts if you’re using).
Pour the batter into a greased brownie pan (I spaced and left mine at a friend’s house so I made mine in a pie plate). Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes and voila!
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Daring Baker’s June Challenge – Battenberg Cake

Domestic

Mandy of What The Fruitcake?! came to our rescue last minute to present us with the Battenberg Cake challenge! She highlighted Mary Berry’s techniques and recipes to allow us to create this unique little cake with ease.

This was my first month doing a Daring Baker challenge after moving and it was so fun! I can’t believe I stopped doing them for a while! I’m back at it people – though I am a day late for posting! Eep!!

I have seen Battenberg cakes before but I had never made one until yesterday! It’s always fun and rewarding to make something difficult and come out on top! I took it one step further (because duh, of course I would) and I made the fondant myself too! Recipes like this make me miss Toronto, because my mother would have loved to see! I sent her a picture, but it’s not the same as seeing my masterpiece in person! When I first read this recipe I was a little scared to be honest and now I’m bummed out that I didn’t make several versions of this over the month to make a lovely epic post about all the different ways we Battenberg’ed it up in June. Next month, that’s the plan.

I used the recipe Mandy supplied, an altered version of Mary Berry’s Battenberg recipe. It was super, super easy to make and really good! It sprang up exactly as it should and that always makes me happy. I want to make vanilla/chocolate versions, strawberry/chocolate versions, mint/chocolate verions and and and I’d like to use ganache as the glue instead of the apricot jam (or use strawberry jam in a strawberry version). The possibilities are pretty much endless!

Daring Baker's June Challenge - Battenberg

Cake:
3/4 cup butter, softened & cut in cubes
3/4 cup caster sugar
1 1/4 cups self-raising flour
3 large eggs, room temp
1/2 cup ground almond
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
red food coloring, paste, liquid or gel
Finishing:
1/3 cup apricot jam
1 cup fondant
   1lb mini marshmallows
   2lbs icing sugar
   little bit of water
   butter for greasing hands and working area
Daring Baker's June Challenge - Battenberg Cake
Daring Baker's June Challenge - Battenberg Cake
First, make a tin foil wall for your pan so you have that rectangle shape. Super simple, then start on the batter. I was reading that the ‘drop it all in one bowl’ technique worked really well here, so that’s what I did.
Daring Baker's June Challenge - Battenberg Cake
Daring Baker's June Challenge - Battenberg Cake
After I put half of the batter in half of the pan, I added a few drops of red food coloring to the rest. Then I started on the fondant! The fondant was super simple. You need 1lb of mini marshmallows, a few drops of water, 2lbs of icing sugar and something to grease your hands with (I used butter).
Daring Baker's June Challenge - Battenberg Cake
Daring Baker's June Challenge - Battenberg Cake
Melt the marshmallows with a little water in a double boiler and then drop the mass of melted goo onto a seriously greased up counter top or cookie sheet or whatever. Then dump the icing sugar on top of the goo and knead it the way you’d knead bread!
Daring Baker's June Challenge - Battenberg Cake
Daring Baker's June Challenge - Battenberg Cake
Kneading the fondant takes a while so by the time I was done the cakes were ready. Let them cool in the pan for a bit, then let them cool completely. I stacked them to cut them into their four long squares.
Daring Baker's June Challenge - Battenberg Cake
Heat the jam in a double boiler and then press through a sieve or small strainer to get all the bits out.
Daring Baker's June Challenge - Battenberg Cake
Daring Baker's June Challenge - Battenberg Cake
Then glue your cake pieces together with the jam and roll out your fondant!
Daring Baker's June Challenge - Battenberg Cake
Daring Baker's June Challenge - Battenberg Cake
Daring Baker's June Challenge - Battenberg Cake
Place the cake (with jam glue on the bottom) on the fondant, then brush more jam on the cake and wrap the fondant around it! This is kinda tricky.
Daring Baker's June Challenge - Battenberg Cake
Daring Baker's June Challenge - Battenberg Cake
Then I used the back of a knife to make the traditional scores on the top of the cake!
Daring Baker's June Challenge - Battenberg Cake
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Homemade Snickers Bars – yes really!

Domestic

I’m not going to lie to you here, these are going to take the better part of your afternoon to make – but not all at once. There’s a lot of chilling and rechilling and setting and chilling again. So make sure you make this for someone who will really appreciate it, or someone you’re really down with – or both! I made these for our friend Steve’s birthday this weekend. He’s got a bit of a serious sweet tooth. His cake was even more epic than these – more on that later this week. I’m happy to report he loved them, his girlfriend loved them and their guests loved them too! Winning all over the place.

So, they are labor intensive because they’re made in four separate steps and they need to completely set up and cool off before you pour the next layer on top or you’ll totally wreck it. No pressure though haha. Also, I should note that even if they set up properly, they’re a pain in the ass to cut free from the pan and this whole production might have gone a lot smoother (and prettier) if I had made them in chocolate bar molds. When I made Twix Bites a few months ago, I made a mess and then I used molds. I’m about 4200km (or 2609 miles) from all my cool kitchen gear so I had to make due, however I’m totally ordering chocolate bar molds like, right now.

First you’ve got the base chocolate layer, then the nougat, then caramel (I reeeeally recommend you make this from scratch) and then of course the top layer of chocolate. So let’s get to it!

Homemade Snickers Bars

Homemade Snickers Bars – via How Sweet it Is
1 1/4 cups chocolate chips
1/4 cup peanut butter
             *
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup evaporated milk
1 1/2 cups marshmallow fluff
1/4 cup peanut butter
1 1/2 cup salted peanuts chopped
1 tsp vanilla extract
             *
Homemade caramel (or 1 14-ounce bag of caramels & 1/4 cup whipping cream)
             *
1 1/4 cups milk chocolate chips
1/4 cup peanut butter

Homemade Snickers Bars
Homemade Snickers Bars
So first, melt 1 1/4 cups chocolate chips with 1/4 cup peanut butter over medium low heat until creamy and then pour/spread into the bottom of a well greased 9 x 13 pan. You can use a smaller pan, up to about 9 x 9 (each layer will be thicker but there will be fewer pieces overall and it will take longer for each layer to set). Let this cool and then totally set in the fridge. Now, onto the nougat.
Homemade Snickers Bars
Homemade Snickers Bars
Melt the butter and the sugar in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat and stir in the evaporated milk.
Homemade Snickers Bars
Homemade Snickers Bars
Add the marshmallow fluff (sadly it has to be the crap from the store or it wont set right) and once that’s incorporated, the peanut butter.
Homemade Snickers Bars
Homemade Snickers Bars
Chop up the peanuts roughly so there are still some big chunks in there! Stir that into the saucepan.
Homemade Snickers Bars
Let this cool off a bit before you pour it over the bottom layer! The bottom layer will be cold and set in the fridge by now, but if you pour crazy hot nougat over it, you’ll melt it! I let it cool for about 10 minutes or so before I poured it over the chocolate. Pop this back in the fridge and set your sights on caramel!
Homemade Snickers Bars
Homemade Snickers Bars
I made Amish Caramel (the only real difference I found between Amish Caramel and the Microwave Caramel I made in February for the Twix Bites is that Amish Caramel takes longer and is a bit of a pain in the ass). I will explain Amish Caramel in a different post, so in the meantime, either use about 1 3/4 cups of the Microwave Caramel or melt a 14oz bag of caramels with 1/4 cup of whipping cream. Either way, let it cool off some before you pour it over the nougat! Put it back in the fridge while you prep the top layer of this ridiculously amazing treat. The top is the same as the bottom, so again melt 1 1/4 cups of chocolate chips with 1/4 cup of peanut butter in a saucepan and pour it over the caramel layer.
Homemade Snickers Bars
Let these babies set up overnight in the fridge and they’re ready to be attacked the next day! You can probably get away with just a couple of hours in the fridge but they’re worth the wait! We dug into the tray while I was at their house, and hours after I left I was getting texts that they were still being devoured and loved. Best compliment ever.
Homemade Snickers Bars
This pic was taken the next day as they sat down with the tray – and a spoon. Love!!
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Raw Vegan Chocolate Cake

Healthy

Yes, yes. I know. Another raw vegan recipe. Yes people, it is another raw vegan recipe and it is amazing! Getting into raw vegan cooking doesn’t mean I’m only going to ever eat raw or even that I’m only ever going to eat vegan, but I’m looking at it the same way a lot of people look at quitting smoking. Every cigarette a person doesn’t smoke is better for them, right? So I really think that every vegan or raw vegan meal I eat is better for me. Plus with raw vegan desserts like this, it’s pretty hard to go wrong!

This was yet another vegan treat that was happily devoured by a room of non vegans.

Raw Vegan Chocolate Cake

Raw Vegan Chocolate Cake via Mama in the Kitchen
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup raw cocoa or carob powder
1 1/2 cups dates, pitted
2 cups soaked oat groats (or oatmeal grinded into oat flour)
6 tablespoons raw local honey

Raw Vegan Chocolate Cake
Raw Vegan Chocolate Cake
First, process your sea salt, raw cocoa or carob and dates. It’s sticky! Then add in the honey!
Raw Vegan Chocolate Cake
Raw Vegan Chocolate Cake
After that was mixed as well as I could get it, I mixed in the oat flour (or soaked oat groats). Now grease whatever tins or pans you’re using with coconut oil and press the batter into them. They don’t take very long to set, then you just pop them out and add whatever vegan frosting you like! I used the Deceptively Delicious chocolate pudding recipe I first tried last year. To make it vegan, I used non-dairy margarine instead of Becel.
Raw Vegan Chocolate Cake
This recipe is pretty dense, I could only eat one layer of this little cake at a time!
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