Red Velvet Graduation Cake

My cousin graduated from high school!  My aunt asked me to make a cake for her graduation party, and I was happy to do so.  This is a 12" square red velvet (my cousin's request) cake with white chocolate cream cheese frosting.  It's the largest cake I've ever made and I learned a lot throughout the process.  In total, it took me approximately 10 hours to complete (including planning, practicing, calculating, etc), although much of that time was spent desperately trying to recover from some...unexpected challenges (more on that later).  Most importantly, my cousin liked it!  Yay!

Battenberg Cake (Daring Bakers' Challenge)

This month's Daring Bakers' Challenge was a type of cake I'd never heard of before: Battenberg Cake.  The first Battenberg Cake was a wedding cake for Queen Victoria's granddaughter and the Prince of Battenberg.  The two-color checkerboard pattern is known as Batternberg markings.  This challenge was very fun (and very British) - my favorite so far!

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.

Amish Friendship Bread

When I was young, I would often watch my mother make bread.  I was particularly fascinated by the weird bubbly yeast - even more so when my mom told me the yeast was "alive".  She told me we needed to feed the yeast with sugar and make sure the water wasn't too hot so that we didn't kill it.  I became very concerned for the welfare of these little yeast creatures (especially because I knew they eventually ended up in the oven), so I asked my mom if I could keep some yeast as a pet.  I think I watched my yeast pets do absolutely nothing in a bowl for a little while, and occasionally fed  them sugar, but I eventually grew pretty bored with them.

Cinnamon Latte Cupcakes

Every morning, I walk to work, go to my favorite coffee place, and nod my head in affirmation to the barista's question, "You want your regular?".  My regular is a double tall latte with lots of cinnamon.  The coffee house that I go to has a special name for this - it's called a Caffé Viennese.

Whenever I make coffee at home, I'll also dust some cinnamon on top.  I got a craving for coffee cupcakes the other morning, and decided to make some - topped with cinnamon frosting of course.

Sesame & Vanilla Sugar Challah (Daring Bakers' Challenge)

It's time for the May's Daring Bakers' Challenge post!  I'm really enjoying these challenges.  They force me to bake things I'm not familiar with, and both challenges have yielded really tasty results.

May’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge was pretty twisted – Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to make challah! Using recipes from all over, and tips from “A Taste of Challah,” by Tamar Ansh, she encouraged us to bake beautifully braided breads.

Challah is a celebratory Jewish bread, and can be braided with three, four, or six strands of bread.  While deciding how many braids to try, I had a brief flashback to the summer I unsuccessfully attempted to learn to french braid hair.  That summer taught me one thing: braiding is not a great strength of mine.  Therefore, for this challenge, I stuck with the three strand braids.  Maybe someday I'll get brave and try four or six.  I decided to try two flavor variations - sesame, and vanilla sugar.

Mini Rhubarb Crumble

A few months ago, Mr. Buttercream and I were traveling in Scotland.  We took a guided multi-day tour of the Highlands, and were unfortunately starting to feel the effects from days of eating greasy restaurant food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Our tour stopped in a town called Fort Augustus for lunch.  Queasy and slightly green, Mr. Buttercream and I desperately looked around for something light to eat.

We settled on a restaurant that had a pretty extensive dessert menu, thinking that a fruit dessert would be good for our stomachs.  We ordered rhubarb crumble and some herbal tea.  Our crumble came.  It had something on top that we assumed was cream.  It was not.  It was cheese.  Cheese.  Hiding under the cheesy abomination was some tasty sweet rhubarb, but getting at it without accidentally getting a bite of the horrible topping was difficult.  As you can imagine, this did nothing to help our queasiness, and we returned to the tour bus both hungry and even more ill.

Apple Mint Panna Cotta

Both my parents and my in-laws have really pretty, food-producing gardens.  My parents' garden is full of apples, potatoes, rhubarb, and beans, and my in-laws have zucchini, watermelon, and garlic chives.  I really enjoy both gardens, and I especially love baking and cooking with the fruits and vegetables that start popping out of them in the spring.

We celebrated Mother's Day for my mom a day early this year.  I decided to make Mom some mint panna cotta using the apple mint that seems to have taken over a large portion of her garden.