Sweets

Valentine’s Heart Pound Cake

lizellyn Sweets ,

Valentine's Day Pound Cake

This was my Valentine’s gift to my family – a pound cake in a pound cake.  The pink (vanilla) cake stayed remarkably moist after being baked inside the chocolate cake.  My kids really liked snacking on the extra leftover pink cake.  My daughter is a true chocolate lover and she doesn’t believe that chocolate cake actually is an acceptable form of chocolate.  She prefers ganache and fudge to chocolate cake.  However, she appreciated the fun look of the cake and enjoyed a few slices.  Less than 24 hours later, all the cake is gone (the pink scraps and the one with the heart inside).

Lemon Curd and White Chocolate Cupcake

lizellyn Sweets

Lemon curd cupcakes with White Choc Frosting-2

This recipe centers around, both literally and figuratively, a lemon curd filling.  The lemon curd filling was a lucky recipe find.  I was on a hunt for a new angel food cake and I came upon a rolled-up angel food cake with this lemon curd filling.  I tried the recipe and the filling was amazing.  I knew it would also be great inside a cupcake.  The cupcake is topped off with a white chocolate Lindt Truffle cream cheese frosting.  All together, it’s rich and delicious.

I need to find other recipes to use this lemon-curd.  I personally enjoyed eating the filling by the spoonful (it’s gluten free).

Frozen Chocolate Pastry Cream Sandwiches

lizellyn more sweets , ,

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Sometimes great concoctions come from extra ingredients.  I was making Napoleons for New Year’s Eve and had some extra filling.  I piped it onto a graham cracker and stuck it in the freezer.  New Year’s Day – best frozen dessert sandwich ever!  The graham cracker was soft and the rich chocolate filling was decadent.  It was like an ice cream sandwich with the most premium ice cream.  It was so good that it was requested as a birthday dessert in lieu of a birthday cake.

Napoleons may be a French pastry that have an origin in Italy, but this frozen dessert is all American.

Banana-Chip Oatmeal Cookies (gluten free)

lizellyn Sweets , ,

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It’s been a while since I’ve done anything gluten-free and I was jonesing for dessert.  Once again, I bought too many bananas.  (Actually, I think I bought the same number of bananas that I normally do, but no one in the family ate them this week.  Maybe it is a conspiracy to encourage me to have to come up with banana dessert  recipes).  Well, I wasn’t in the mood to make banana muffins.  I really don’t like repeating recipes too many times.  I checked my pantry.  I found some milk-chocolate chips.  Score!  In the end, Banana-Chip Oatmeal Cookies.

Oreo in a Cupcake

lizellyn Sweets , ,

oreo cupcake

If you look, the Oreo is smiling at you.  After everyone ate these, they were smiling, too.  This is a really well-balanced cupcake – just enough vanilla and just enough chocolate.  The cookie becomes soft inside the vanilla cupcake.  To top it off, is a chocolate buttercream with crushed Oreos for decoration.

Thanks again to my daughter for photographing the cupcakes!

Irish Coffee Cupcakes

lizellyn Sweets ,

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photo taken by my daughter – Screen Shot 2014-10-22 at 8.55.28 AM

Bailey’s Irish Creme is a fantastic compliment to desserts.  This is a mocha flavored cupcake with a Bailey’s buttercream.  To get the perfect buttercream you need have the right balance of liquid to powdered sugar and must whip the buttercream for a sufficient period of time.  A good buttercream will be fluffy.  If you add too much liquid, the buttercream will not hold its shape.  If you do not add enough liquid, the buttercream will be stiff and difficult to pipe.  Do not stress – just keep taste testing your batch until it is perfect.  Taste testing – one of the perks of baking!

Blueberry Cake

lizellyn Sweets

blueberry cake Blueberry cake eaten

Blueberry Cake and Blueberry Cake 10 minutes later.  My teenage son doesn’t even like blueberries and he ate three pieces of cake.

Here’s the back story on tonight’s cake.  It was snowing, I didn’t feel like going to the grocery store to get anything for dinner.  After looking in my refrigerator, I decided that I would make a breakfast dinner.  If you’re not familiar, that’s when you eat breakfast foods for dinner.  My kids are convinced that breakfast foods taste better at dinnertime.  I decided to make scrambled eggs and sausage.  I considered starch options: toast, bagels, or biscuits.  Then I thought to myself, if I make muffins or a coffee cake it’s like a combination of a breakfast starch and a dinner dessert.  Hence, I chose blueberry cake – it was like killing two birds with one stone.  Looking at the empty plate above, it’s more like my family killed-off the cake.