Black & White Sesame Cupcakes with Sweet Bean Filling

Last week, I saw a blog post about a cupcake with black sesame buttercream.  Immediately, I began to plot my next cupcake.  I love sesame.  I sometimes have weird cravings for it.  I started to envision a lightly sesame cupcake with sweet bean filling and sesame buttercream.  At this point, I realized I was scheming to create a cupcake version of my favorite dim sum treat: Jin Deui.

Grapefruit Daisy Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream

I miss the sun.  Wintertime in Seattle is gray, rainy, dreary, gray, wet, and gray.  Honestly, Seattleites really should come up with a bunch of words for different types of gray...like the Eskimos have with snow (which is not true according to Wikipedia).  When I saw a recipe on Whisk-Kid for Grapefruit Poppy Seed Cupcakes with Strawberry Rhubarb Jam and Cream Cheese Swiss Meringue Buttercream, I began craving them immediately because they seemed summery and delicious.

Valentine's Day Raspberry Mini Pies

I attempted to keep these mini pies a secret from my husband until Valentine's Day.  The plan was to make them the weekend before, freeze them, and then sneak home from work during lunch to bake one on Valentine's Day.  This mostly worked.  Unfortunately, my husband kept wanting to do annoying things like get into the freezer for ice.  So, he had to have known something was going on when I banned him from getting into the freezer.  A better idea might have been to store them in the freezer at work...

"Naked" Chocolate Orange Cake

My husband's and my birthdays are so close together that we celebrate them jointly.  This year, he requested orange chocolate for his birthday cake (which is really our birthday cake).  The oranges on the cake ended up matching the brilliant Seattle sunset we had that day.

First Post: Chocolate Raspberry Birthday Cake

My first blog post!  I realized a while ago that I'd become something of a baking nerd.  I also quickly realized that not many people want to hear me relate to them my research on various types of buttercream.  So, I'm starting this blog.  Hopefully, if you read it you are also a bit of a baking nerd and find my baking research and adventures at least somewhat interesting.  I am by no means an experienced baker, so all of these projects are learning experiences.  Some of which succeed (at least mostly) and some of which...don't.  I consider this birthday cake that I made for my mother's birthday mostly a success!  Woot!

My mom requested a chocolate cake (everyone always does).  She later added that raspberries might be nice as well.  I had previously made some cupcakes decorated with chocolate plastic roses that my mom seemed to like, so I decided to make some more of those for her.