Moist Carrot Cake

I am picky about carrot cake.  Raisins are not acceptable in carrot cake.* Pineapple is SO not acceptable in carrot cake!  Pecans however, are necessary.  (This is where me and my husband disagree.)

Not too many pecans, just enough to add a little bit of texture, you know?

I like to go a little heavy on the spices and to slather the whole thing in cream cheese frosting.  This cake is totally worth the 20 minutes it takes to finely grate the carrots!  (Anybody else have an aversion to grating things?  Seriously, I would rather swallow staples.)

What's your favorite way to enjoy carrot cake?

Read More

Coconut Cream Cake

Ok.  See?  Freaky pictures.

Pretend to ignore and we can be friends.   It gets better, I promise.


I'm feeling a little bit lost with no holidays to prepare for.  Halloween through Easter has been a whirlwind of baking and trying to cram in everything I want to make and now my baking schedule is completely free until the 4th of July comes around.  It's a nice feeling actually.  I get to wrack my brain for delicious treats to invent instead of plowing through the 3 pages of bookmarked recipes on my computer.

This baby is a cake I make every year around Easter and it is the moistest cake everr.  It is a poke cake, drizzled with cream of coconut and has a fantastic coconut flavor.  It needs to be eaten within 2 days because it is so moist, but you shouldn't have problems getting rid of it.

Just to be clear, Cream of Coconut is that sweet syrupy stuff, often found in a can, over on the mixers aisle  (by the soda).  Look for Margarita mix and it's probably sitting on the shelf next to that.  I have yet to find a store that doesn't carry it, sometimes you just have to poke around a little bit.  Coconut milk, or Coconut Cream (non-sweetened) are NOT the same and will not yield the same results.  The brand I buy is Coco Lopez.  Check the back.   If there are a bazillion-ty calories in 2 Tbsp, and sugar is one of the first ingredients, you've got the right stuff.  Cream of Coconut is a great way to add a strong coconut flavor without adding gritty chunks of coconut to whatever you are baking!

Read More

Cookies' n ' Cream Cake {Velociraptor Skeleton Cake}

 

About... two-ish months ago my oldest turned five and requested a dinosaur party.  This was the resulting cake.  It was inspired by a picture I saw on Google that had no instructions and no working link to the original image.  So... this is what I came up with.  I'm no artist, but my little guy was happy with how it turned out.

Here's our BIG five-year old in his dino party attire:

Not a dino fan?  Try the regular Cookies' n' Cream version of this cake.  Don't forget the Cookies n Cream ice cream!

Read More

Mint Chocolate Chip Cake

Hypothetically...   If your husband is out of town it's okay to eat popcorn for dinner, right?


No worries.


I had a pizookie for dessert, so most of my important food groups are covered.


Also, me and the kids watched Netflix all day and left the fireplace on all day.  Sometimes being irresponsible feels so good.

If I was feeling awesome I would find some way of tying irresponsibility into this Mint Chocolate Chip cake, but frankly...  I have 95 episodes of Psych waiting for me, so I'm just going to lay this one on you.

I made this cake for my mom's birthday way back in January.  Serve with Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream.  Nummy!  If you like mint ice cream, you'll probably love this one.

Read More

Summery Strawberry Coconut Cake

This summer has been... interesting...  being the first real "summer" for us, since Chase just started preschool last year.  I totally underestimated how much I actually got done during the 4 hours he was at preschool each week.  Back when I posted our dino treats I mentioned we had started doing some summer units, to keep him preoccupied, and to keep me from going insane.  We've now moved from dinos to continents and we'll probably do one continent every week or two until school starts in September.

I LOVE doing these units with him and he is in heaven, but so much of my free time now is prepping school stuff instead of baking.  (Seriously... homeschoolers... I have no idea how you do this.)  Luckily I have a ton of posts backed up so hopefully I won't be too absent, and I might even get an Arctic-themed treat posted sometime this week.  I love to bake but I also love to spend time with my kids, especially while they're so young and they still like me.  {kinda.}

Now that it's July and it finally feels like summer, I thought it was time to post this summery cake. 

Strawberry cake.  Coconut cream cheese frosting.  Fresh strawberries.  Coconut. 

It's a little slice of summery heaven. 

This  is so yummy I had to give half of it away so I wouldn't eat it all.  The fresh strawberries really make this cake, so I wrote this up as a 4 layer cake (just by cutting each 9 inch rounds in half across the middle) to make room for more strawberries and frosting. I also wrote up the frosting as 1 1/2 times what I did to make enough for each layer, and give you some extra to frost the cake adequately... *cough*.

Don't freak out when you see how much sugar the frosting calls for,  mmkay?  

It's worth it. I promise.

Happy July!!

Read More

Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Buttercream

Do you like my ghetto cake picture?  Turns out in the craziness of Chase's birthday I completely forgot to take a picture of his six layer "bone" cake.  So you get a picture of a cake that's lost a layer, fallen on it's side, sat out for a day and a half, and been 75% devoured.  I should probably roll one of my sweatpant legs up right now, tie a bandana around my head, and ask people to call me "K-dizzle".  If you can overlook my ghetto-ness today I'll reward you with a fantastic chocolate frosting recipe.

homie.

This buttercream is great because it tastes nothing like butter.  You don't feel sick as you eat it or want to scrape most of it off.  This is a great go-to chocolate frosting recipe. Also, my dad told me over and over what a great chocolate cake this was, so I'd like to public thank Mr. Duncan Hines for his boxed Devil's Food mix (x2) in helping make the ultimate chocolate cake so ridiculously easy.

This recipe frosted my entire 6-layer cake (barely).  If you want to do great dollops of frosting on 24 cupcakes you should probably make the whole recipe; otherwise, half it because it makes loads. 

Read More