Yogurt Lemon Poppy Seed Cake

Citrus cakes are one of my favorite cakes, but only if the true citrus essence comes through. This cake comes together really quickly and if you're like me, you already have everything at home for it. The cake is super moist, refreshingly tangy from the yogurt and lemon, with a lovely crunch from the poppy seeds. It also freezes well so you can enjoy it whenever the mood strikes.

Delicious slice of cake!

This cake was a big hit with my husband. He thought it was a tad too sweet, even though I had reduced the amount of sugar in the original recipe. Something to try next time :) I loved it too. It delivered the right lemon punch which I like, and it had a soft and spongy texture. Wonderful with a cup of tea!

ABC - July 2019: Mixed Berry Ginger Crumb Cake

This month's recipe for the ABC bakers is the Mixed Berry Ginger Crumb Cake from The Brown Eyed Baker's blog. I almost didn't bake this because it was like a million degrees in my kitchen (aka 90s F). Then I came up with the following plan:

• Be done as quickly as possible, so I
• Skipped the fruit marinade which didn't make sense to me anyway.
• Skipped the crumb topping because in my experience, the crumb topping is only crunchy and delicious on the day you bake it, and I was going to take it to work the next day.
• Substitute coarse cornmeal with almond flour because I only had fine cornmeal.
• Use a different fruit combo so I can save myself a trip to the grocery store.
• Substitute a mixture of sour cream and plain yogurt for the milk, and adjust the leavening accordingly.
• Ground ginger and candied ginger are yummy, but I wanted to give it more so I added some ground cardamom to the cake as well.
• Finally, bake the cake in the toaster oven, which is big enough to hold a 9" x 9" cake pan.

The cake was fragrant, tender and very flavorful. Bon Appetit! :)

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog or visit us on Facebook for more information.

ABC - September 2018: Beet and Ginger Cake

Wow, I can't believe it's been so long since my last blog post. What can I say? Life happens! :)

This month's ABC recipe was an interesting one: Beet and Ginger Cake. The recipe also calls for cream cheese frosting, but I chose to leave the cake "naked". I played a little bit with the recipe and made several tweaks which you'll find below.

Moist and flavorful (and nut-free)!

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

ABC - Spiced Apple Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

This month's ABC recipe is perfect for the fall season. Warm spices like cinnamon and cloves are very appropriate for this time of year. This recipe for Spiced Apple Cream Cheese Coffee Cake, represents a cake, a cheesecake and caramelized apples, all in one. I really loved it and so did my coworkers. I did make a few changes (such as changing the name) which I've posted at the bottom of this post.

Apple Cheesecake Bars with Caramel Drizzle

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

TBB - Honey Cake

As I'm typing this, I just pulled out another batch of Rose's Granola out of the oven. The smell of toasted almonds and cinnamon wafting through the air, penetrating every room in the house, is amazing.

I digress. Back to the Honey Cake.

I can't believe I made this cake exactly a year ago, when the recipe was published on the NPR site. With nothing to compare it to, and not sure about all the sweet ingredients in the cake, I made half the recipe in my smaller tube pan which I brought back with me from Morocco a few years back. I decreased the sugar by 1/8 cup (which is 1/4 cup if you're making the full recipe). The alcohol in the recipe got replaced by more OJ.

Sweet and moist Honey Cake. Bon Appetit!

Final thoughts/tips:

• Hubby loved the cake, but did note that it was a bit on the sweet side.
• I liked the cake too. I had never eaten Honey Cake before so I wasn't sure how "authentic" it was. It was definitely nice and moist with a somewhat complex flavor profile (must be from the coffee). Not sure I'd make it again though.
• Don't forget to check out the other Alpha Bakers.

ABC - Apricot & Almond Olive Oil Cake

This month's recipe for the ABC bakers screams summer to me: Apricot & Olive Oil Cake. Shortly after I had picked this recipe for our August challenge, I ran into some beautiful organic apricots at Trader Joe's. Since they don't last very long, I decided to bake the cake early and not wait till August :o)

Yummy cake!

I've always wanted to make a cake with olive oil so this was my chance to do so. Since I only have extra virgin olive oil, I mixed it with canola oil  50-50, fearing that it would otherwise be too overpowering.

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

ABC - Hazelnut Rocher Cake

That's this month's ABC recipe. Of course, I had to convert it to an Almond Rocher Cake where I replaced hazelnut meal with almond meal.

Some ABC folks reported crumbliness issues, so I set out to make just half the recipe using my 6" round pan and fix the crumbly texture by adding more egg to the recipe. The weather was really hot so I quickly decided to forego the creamy filling, and serve it as a tea cake instead. This worked out really well. I took it to work where everybody loved it. Honestly, I loved it too and so did hubby who's normally not a chocolate fan. Would I bake this again? With my modifications, you betcha!

Almond Rocher Cake with an apricot glaze and finely chopped European milk chocolate

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

TBB - Cran-Apple Upside Down Cake

Although I'm super late with this post, I couldn't get myself to not blog about it. It will be a brief post though.

Hubby doesn't like sour things. So I knew he wouldn't like the fresh cranberries in this recipe, so I split up the cake in two: one half with cranberries for yours truly, and one half with thinly sliced Gala apples.

Cranberry-Apple Upside Down Cake. Why choose when you can have both? :o)

TBB - Lemon Posset Shortcakes

I was almost forced to skip this week's challenge. My left wrist had started acting up again, out of nowhere. But then all the Alpha Bakers started saying how wonderful the Lemon Posset Shortcakes were, so I had to come up with something.

Shortcuts, shortcuts.... I had some Super Lemony Muffins in the freezer which I had made for my other baking group, Avid Baker's Challenge. This is the first time that the baked product of one baking group aids in a dessert of another :o)

I need more shortcuts... Hmmm. There is no shortcut for Lemon Posset. Or is there? An idea began to form in my head. I watched some videos on how to make Lemon Posset on YouTube to get a sense for the milky consistency immediately after cooking. It was still fairly runny, and that's when I knew my idea would work. What is my idea? Well, if England and South America got married, and had a baby, it would be named Lemon Posset Leche Cake. Yes, I used the warm Lemon Posset mixture to soak my Super Lemony Muffins, Tres Leches-style. It was awesome!! :o)

Lemon Posset Leche Cake with a chocolate whipped cream shell border. I love lemon + chocolate!

TBB - Chocolate Cuddle Cake

Rose's Alpha Bakers embarked on a wonderful chocolate chiffon cake this week with caramel whipped cream and chocolate ganache. Also known as Chocolate Cuddle Cake. I was a bit in a hurry so I ended up taking some shortcuts: I skipped the ganache and I used my own recipe for the caramel whipped cream. The cake itself I didn't make any changes to, except I baked it in a 2-piece tube pan.

The cake was served at a dinner party at our house. It was a huge hit. Everybody had seconds and left my house happy :o) I even got a birthday cake request for this cake!

(Half naked) Chocolate Cuddle Cake

TBB - English Dried Fruit Cake

This is my inaugural recipe for a new bake along called Rose's Alpha Bakers. We will be baking our way through The Baking Bible by the queen of baking, Rose Levy Beranbaum. I had the honor and pleasure to be one of the recipe testers for the book. Rose was kind enough to mention us by name in the acknowledgement section of her book, which is totally awesome!!!

Unfortunately I missed last week's official inaugural recipe which was the Kouign Amann. You can read all about the other bakers' adventures in Marie's round-up post. But I won't let that spoil the fun for this week's English Dried Fruit Cake. I don't recall ever eating fruit cake. It's usually too dense for my liking or doused with some sort of alcohol. And since not a lot of people speak kindly of said cake, I didn't miss eating it or bother baking it.

And then Rose developed this fruit cake recipe. I was immediately intrigued by the unusual batter preparation technique which has you cook some of the ingredients on the stove.

Does that look like wet sand?

One bonus: no mixer required. Everything is done by hand. It's also easy and quick to make. I was heating up leftovers for dinner while whipping up the batter for this cake. One more thing... Even with all my substitutions and not using any of the recommended cake pans, it turned out awesome!

English Dried Fruit cake baked in my new vintage Bundt pan :o)

ABC - Boston Cream Pie

Orange-flavored Boston Cream Pie

This month's ABC project is Boston Cream Pie. Guess what? It's not really a pie. It's a cake. As a matter of fact, it's Massachusetts' official state dessert and it has its own Wikipedia page. When I saw the Boston Cream Pie recipe on the King Arthur Flour website, I knew I had to make it. The cake looked so soft and fluffy, the pastry cream so silky smooth, and the chocolate glaze so luscious. Then when I baked it, and ran into issues, it started to look like it was going to be the cake from hell (that just looked pretty to lure you in). I'm exaggerating a bit, of course, but I did run into issues, so my problem solving brain already started thinking of a Plan B and came up with a Boston Cream "Trifle" if things went really wrong :o)

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

ABC - Mile-High Vanilla Sponge Cake

I haven't posted anything in a while, I'm surprised I could even log in :o) This post is incredibly late, but I just couldn't get myself to skip it all together. The September recipe for the Avid Bakers was the Mile-High Vanilla Sponge Cake from The Weekend Baker. I love orange so I decided to make the orange-flavored version. Instead of 2 tsp of orange zest though, I used the zest of 2 whole oranges. I didn't measure it but it was probably close to 3 Tbsp. I was planning on adding finely grated semisweet chocolate as well but then forgot as I was in a hurry to get this cake in the oven. The plan was to take it with me to a friends house.

Luckily, it's Fall here now so it's a bit cooler outside where I cooled my cake upside down. In about 1 hour it was fully cooled. Yay! If you would like to join the ABC baking club, please visit the ABC blog to find out more details about how to join.

If you would like to join the ABC baking club, please visit the ABC blog to find out more details about how to join.

Birthday Cake

White Cake with Whipped Cream and Raspberry Gelee

I can't possibly be the only one who bakes their own birthday cake, and yet, when I tell people, they act surprised. How about you? Do you bake your own birthday cake? If you visit my blog (often), you are probably a (home) baker. And you probably don't enjoy store bought cakes that much. Partially hydrogenated frosting anyone? Okay, okay, I can be a bit of a cake snob :o)

While browsing Sandie's blog, Crumbs of Love, I was very impressed with the white cake she made for her daughter's birthday. What I liked the most was the wonderful crumb of the cake and the fact that it had sour cream in it. When my birthday came around, I had the perfect excuse to try out this recipe! One could argue that a birthday is not a time to experiment with new recipes but I had a good feeling about the recipe :o)

A slice of birthday cake heaven :o)

ABC - Nut-Crusted Chocolate-Banana Swirl Cake

To all my readers, I wish you a very happy New Year with lots of love, happiness, and good health! And lots of baking pleasure, of course :o)

The ABC bakers are starting 2012 with the first recipe from the new book we're baking from: The Weekend Baker by Abby Dodge. When I emailed Abby about that, she was very excited. I also asked her to pick our first recipe for us and she happily did: Nut-Crusted Chocolate-Banana Swirl Cake. What a great recipe selection that was.

Chocolate-Banana Swirl Cake with Chocolate Glaze

To find out more information on how to join the ABC bakers, please click here.

HCB - German Chocolate Cake

This week, the Heavenly Cake Bakers (led by Jenn of Knitty Baker) tackled the Pumpkin Cheesecake. I made this cake last November and have very fond memories of it. Definitely one of my favorite recipes from Rose's Heavenly Cakes, so give it a try this Thanksgiving (or anytime, really). My friend declared it the best cheesecake she'd ever had :o)

The German Chocolate Cake has been on my to-bake list for a while. Everyone who baked it, loved it. I can't eat coconut or pecans, so the traditional filling and frosting was out. The cake is pretty chocolatey, I heard, so I decided on a non-chocolate filling and a thin chocolate glaze. That worked really well!

A slice of chocolate heaven!

A virtual Thanksgiving

A bunch of us were invited to a virtual Thanksgiving Dinner Party by Phyl. The idea behind this plan is for everyone to make a dish. The virtual Thanksgiving dinner would comprise of all the dishes put together. Neat idea, huh? Phyl will be doing a round-up soon and post a link to everyone's recipe(s). Thanks Phyl!

Who says "healthy" can't be delicious?

My contributions to the Thanksgiving table are: Mediterranean-style Oven-Roasted Vegetables and a Moist and Spicy Layered Pumpkin Cake with Molasses Cream Cheese Frosting. I hope you give these recipes a try. They're always a big hit at our house.

Bon appetit!

HCB - Apple-Cinnamon Crumb Coffee Cake

Wow, it's been a while since I baked along with the Heavenly Cake Bakers, but I'm glad to be back. This week the HCB-ers had Individual Pineapple Upside Down Cake on the menu. I vividly remember these little cakes. Especially the wonderful crumb of the cake. So for this week, I decided to bake something else. With my apples ready for picking (we have a Honeycrisp and a McIntosh tree), the choice was easy: Apple-Cinnamon Crumb Coffee Cake. The picture in the book has captured my attention since the very first time I browsed through the book at a Barnes and Nobles. I have no idea why it took me so long to bake it :o)

Look at those big chunks of buttery crumb topping. Yum!

Bon appetit!

Final thoughts/tips:

• This cake was a big hit. We ate it at room temperature and slightly warm, and preferred the latter. All it needs is a 10 second zap in the microwave. Hubby gave it a 9 out of 10.
• I loved the different flavors and textures that this cake offers. The cake is buttery, tender and moist. The filling has a great apple and cinnamon flavor and the topping is nutty and crunchy which was a wonderful contrast. Using melted butter definitely makes the crumb topping crispy. I increased the amount of flour in the topping by 25% to ensure a great crunch that lasts for a few days.
• The cake part could have been a little "fluffier" but that might be my own fault. I used Argo's Double Acting Alu Free baking powder because that's all I had. Has anyone had any issues with this baking powder? I might go back to Rumford.

Donsuemor Lemon Cream Cakelets

Back in July, I was contacted by a Donsuemor representative and asked if I was interested in participating in Donsuemor's "Dessert a Day" celebration in October for National Dessert Month. Of course I was interested!! :o) The dessert challenge I received was to create a recipe using one (or more) Donsuemor product(s). Donsuemor has been in business since 1976 selling madeleines and financiers, so they know what they’re doing! Through their website, you can order all of their sweet treats. They're made with all-natural ingredients and real butter!! A very big "thank you" goes out to my friend and fellow blogger, Monica of Sweetbites, for referring me to Donsuemor!!

After some deliberation, I eventually narrowed down my choice to the Lemon Zest Madeleines and the French Almond Cakes. When the sample box arrived, hubby and I couldn't wait to try them. They were all individually packed and visually they were both equally impressive. The Lemon Zest Madeleine was buttery with a wonderful lemon taste and aroma, while the French Almond Cakes were exceptionally moist and packed with lots of almond flavor.

The first recipe I developed is called: Donsuemor Almond Cake Truffles. Delicious bite-size treats that are ready to eat in no time since they don’t require any baking. The recipe I will be sharing with you today is for Lemon Cream Cakelets. They're also delicious and quick to make because they require no baking.

I just loved the scalloped edges of the Lemon Zest Madeleines. Since they looked pretty on their own already, I thought to myself, the only thing that could make them prettier is a shiny chocolate ganache glaze. That idea lead me to think about a spin on Boston Cream Pie, one of my favorite desserts. Although I love crème patisserie, aka pastry cream, it’s not something that’s quick or easy to make from scratch, so I had to think of something else.

Donsuemor Almond Cake Truffles

Back in July, I was contacted by a Donsuemor representative and asked if I was interested in participating in Donsuemor's "Dessert a Day" celebration in October for National Dessert Month. Of course I was interested!! :o) A very big "thank you" goes out to my friend and fellow blogger, Monica of Sweetbites, for referring me to Donsuemor!!

The challenge at hand: create a recipe using a Donsuemor product. They sell all sorts of lovely madeleines and financiers, and they're made with real butter!! After some deliberation, I eventually narrowed down my choice to the Lemon Zest Madeleines and the French Almond Cakes. When the sample box arrived, hubby and I couldn't wait to try them. They were all individually packed and visually they were both equally impressive. The Lemon Zest madeleine was buttery with a wonderful lemon taste and aroma, while the French Almond Cakes were exceptionally moist and packed with lots of almond flavor.

Now it was time to get creative and come up with a dessert recipe that I could use these products in. I had many ideas but eventually narrowed it down to two. In this post, I will share with you the recipe for my Donsuemor Almond Cake Truffles. The second Donsuemor recipe will be posted tomorrow, so stay tuned :o)

Donsuemor Almond Cake Truffles