baking » simmiecakes

Blackberry Bundt Cake

Technically this is a mixed berry bundt cake. There are two, count ‘em, two raspberries in this cake as well. If you find them, you win a prize. It’s awesome.

This cake is also awesome. And I finally, finally, got to use my new bundt pan. And by new, I mean I got it two Thanksgivings ago and it’s been sitting in my cupboard ever since. It’s not that I don’t like bundt cakes though. In fact, I think bundt cakes are the bee’s knees. It’s just that I have high standards for bundt cakes, so I couldn’t just use any recipe for the inaugural baking with my new pan.

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Apple Crisp

foliage

We went apple picking the other day. Those are apple trees in that picture down there. Except there are no apples on them. I’ll get to that in a minute. But look! Doesn’t it look so perfectly fall? I love the autumn. I love the crisp air and the bright colors. Autumn reminds me of my childhood. I grew up in New England. And fall is our season. We know how it’s done. And one of my best memories of growing up is going apple picking.

landscape

When I was younger, The Jackster would take me apple picking with the Millers. Arthur and I would run around picking the biggest, shiniest, most beautiful apples we could reach. After a half hour our bags would be overflowing with delicious, juicy apples ready for eating, baking, and cooking.

This time was nothing like that.

golden_delicious

We went rather late in the year so a lot of the apples had already been harvested. And many of the ones that were still on the tree were rotten. It took a little more searching to find apples that were actually good.

andrew

It was Andrew’s first time apple picking. I was almost beside myself with disbelief that anyone could go 24 years without ever going apple picking. It was just a shame that there wasn’t a hayride too (although, he might have been glad about that one) just to complete the experience.

andrew_with_picker

I think he still had fun though. Plus he got to use the crazy, giant apple picker thing. It took us a while, but we managed to find about a peck of apples. Right as we were leaving we found a tree with a bunch of ripe apples that hadn’t started rotting yet.

apples

I was so excited I did a handstand (plus I like doing handstands in random locations).

handstand

On our way out from the orchard we stopped to see if they had any delicious goodies for us to purchase. I could smell apple cider donuts but they didn’t have any for sale. Since it was late in the day most of the treats had been snagged by other people. We did find a cat who seemed to be living the life though.

cat

So, we left without any sweets, but we did have a bag full of apples. And my favorite thing to make with a bag full of apples?

Apple crisp.

bowl_o_crisp

I seriously could eat apple crisp every single day. It got to the point where I was making an apple crisp a week. I can’t get enough of it. So, without further ado…

Apple Crisp

adapted from The Disney Family Cookbook

5-6 large apples
6 tbsp butter
1 cup rolled oats
2/3 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1 1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 salt
2 Tbsp apple juice

apples2

Start off by peeling, coring, and slicing the apples into about 1/4 inch thick slices. Our apples were small so I used almost 10 of them, but 5-6 large ones should do you well. Layer the slices into a buttered and floured casserole dish or other baking pan. I use a 9×9 baking pan.

apple_slices

In a separate bowl, combine the oats, flour, brown sugar, butter, cinnamon, and salt. Blend until a coarse crumble forms.

crumb_topping

Then, spread the crumble over the apples and sprinkle with the juice.

pan

Bake for 35 minutes at 375º until the topping is browned. Serves 6 (or 3 if you are with me).

I’ve been busy…

Baking, baking, baking! I went crazy this past week. Ninety-five sugar cookies, 8 dozen cupcakes, and one adorable candy corn cake later, I’m still not done. I’m on a baking roll. But I’m not baking rolls.

cupcakes

We had a harvest festival at work this past weekend. They have moon bounces, face painting, food, and pumpkins for the little kids. Employees can come and set up tables to sell crafts, food, and baked goods. I’ve been going for a couple of years now and bringing lots of brightly colored cookies and cupcakes for the kids.

leaves_and_webs

pumpkins

I do my part by stuffing the kids full of sugar and then giving them back to their parents. The kids are adorable though. This year I saw a little boy in a full head-to-toe monkey costume complete with a banana peel on his head. He was about 10 months old and had no idea what was going on, but you couldn’t help but smile when looking at him.

leaves

I spent many a late evening last week baking cupcakes, icing cookies, and decorating cake.

making_cupcakes

And yes, I do often bake with my computer in front of me. I have a minor fear I’m going to spill and entire bowl of royal icing on it sometime, but so far I’ve managed to keep it pretty clean.

red_velvet_cupcakes

I made chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing, vanilla cupcakes with vanilla icing, chocolate cupcakes with vanilla icing and vanilla cupcakes with chocolate icing. And then I was very confused. So I made red velvet cupcakes.

icing_cake

Betsy got a hold of my camera and took a bunch of pictures of the cake making process. It was pretty cool because usually it’s me taking pictures of it after the fact or holding my camera in one hand, trying to take a picture of whatever the other hand is doing. Again, risk of dropping camera in batter: high.

cake_scraps

But cake scraps?! Perfect for future desserts. Do I hear trifle?

rolling_fondant

I decided to make a giant piece of candy corn cake for the harvest festival. I figured it was a pretty simple design but would still be cute. I started out by making a triangular shaped cake, icing it with some chocolate icing, and smoothing on some yellow fondant.

smoothing_fondant

Next, I kneaded and rolled out some orange fondant for the center stripe of the candy corn.

kneading_fondant

orange_fondant

Finally, I finished it off by smoothing on the white fondant.

white_fondant

But a giant piece of candy corn isn’t all that exciting, so I decided to add a few little figures to up the cute factor. A little ghost and a witch’s hat did the trick.

ghost

hat

And the finished product!

finished_cake

table

I think I might have finally come down off my sugar high by now…

Blueberry Cake

baked_plate

I’ve been meaning to get more cookbooks. I really only a have a trusty few that I stand by, but I think it’s time to expand my collection. So, this weekend, while standing in the barn of a nice Amish fellow, I found me a new cookbook.

Now, I’m sure you’re wondering how I ended up in the barn of a nice Amish fellow. And even if you’re not, I’m going to tell you.

Well, I was in the market for some new furniture. And I hear the Amish make good stuff. I was also in Colonial Beach, VA to do a triathlon. Triathlons are fun. Andrew came with me. He did the triathlon too. It was his first time and he did a pretty spectacular job.

triathlon

(This was at like 10 AM when we’d already been up for 6 hours and finished a triathlon. We’re so happy because we could still walk and the sleep deprivation hadn’t set in yet.)

But anyways…turns out there’s a pretty nice Amish population in southern Maryland. So, we drove around some, found this fellow’s place and decided to take a look. And then decided that while the furniture was beautiful, I was not ready to drop a paycheck on any of it. But I was willing to drop $12 for this sweet new cookbook.

blueberry

So, armed with a new cookbook and some farmer’s market blueberries, here’s what we came up with.

Blueberry Cake

adapted from The Joy Of Sharing

For the Cake

3/4 cup of granulated sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1/2 cup of milk
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups of blueberries

For the Topping

1/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 375º.

To make the cake, in a large bowl, mix together the oil, sugar, and egg until a lemon yellow color. Stir in the milk.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

blueberry_batter

Slowly stir the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Then, slowly fold in the blueberries. If you coat the blueberries in a little bit of flour before you mix them into your batter, they will be less likely to sink the the bottom of the cake. Just a pinch, and it works like a charm.

pan

Pour the batter into a greased 9×9 inch pan and smooth the top.

To make the topping, combine the butter, flour, sugar, and cinnamon and mix with a fork or a pastry cutter. Then, crumble it over the top of your cake batter.

crumble

Bake in the oven for 45-50 minutes. The blueberries are juicy, the cake is fluffy, and topping is sweet. The cake is more like a lighter, blueberry version of a coffee cake. And oh so delicious.

baked_pan

Mascarpone Brownies

brownies

So, apparently I cannot pronounce nor spell “mascarpone”. I figured this out because my blog came up second in hits when I searched for that word. And this blog isn’t that popular. No, it came up, because I’ve been spelling it “marscapone”, and that’s wrong. Go me and multiple misspellings while posting. Perhaps I should run spell check more often…

chocolate_and_cheese

Also, this is the second brownie recipe in a row that I have posted. What can I say? I love brownies. I think brownies are pretty high up on my list of delicious baked goods. And these brownies? Decadent. These brownies are the inaugural baked good of the new house, so decadent seemed to be in order. So, without further ado…

MaScaRpone Brownies (woo woo for correct spelling!)

adapted from The Kitchn

For the Brownies

1 cup unsalted butter
3 oz semi-sweet chocolate
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup mascarpone cheese
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt

For the Ganache

6 oz semi-sweet chocolate
6 Tbsp whipping cream
3 Tbsp unsalted butter

This recipe is a breeze to make. And since we don’t have air conditioning in our house, a breeze is just what we needed. But onto the recipe…

To make the brownies:

Preheat the oven to 325º.

Melt the butter in the microwave (because that is easiest). Finely chop the chocolate and mix it into the melted butter until it is melted. It was suggested numorous times to use the best quality chocolate you can find. Usually that is what is in my cupboard, but for these puppies, I went all out and bought some Varlhona chocolate bars.

Add the sugar to the chocolate and butter and mix until combined. Stick it back into the trusty microwave for 30 seconds.

Add the mascarpone, eggs, and vanilla to this and mix until smooth. It took me a while, but I got all the lumps out.

Sift the flour, cocoa powder, and salt together and mix into the wet ingredients. Just mix unti they are all combined.

batter

Pour the batter into a greased and floured 8×8 baking pan. Bake for 40-50 minutes.

Remove from the oven and let cool. While the brownies are cooling, it’s a good time to whip up that ganache.

For the Ganache

Heat the butter and the cream in the microwave until the butter is melted. Finely chop the chocolate and stir into the butter and cream until melted and smooth.

ganache

Pour the ganache over the brownies. I stuck mine in the fridge to let the ganache set (since it’s 83º in my house and it didn’t seem like it would work on the counter). Once set, remove from the pan (I just ran a knife along the edges and the whole thing popped right out). Slice into bite-sized squares. Because these are rich, and one bite might be enough.

brownie_strips

Blackberry Bundt Cake

Apple Crisp

Blueberry Cake

Mascarpone Brownies

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