Cakes | Just About Baked

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Oreo Tunnel Pound Cake

When I was a kid, we used to take these two-day drives to New York from Indiana to visit my grandparents. It was kind of torture. There I was, in the middle of the back seat, sandwiched between my brothers with my knees hunched up as they jockeyed for leg room.

Those trips were loud. Really loud. And I really never liked car trips, not then and not now. Still, I always enjoyed the part where we drove through tunnels. Suddenly it got all dark and quiet, just a gentle flash of low lights slipping by as our car sped through the serenity. I always felt regretful when we burst out into the sunshine again and the noise recommenced.

So it stands to reason that I have a soft spot in my heart for tunnels. Tunnels of any kind. I love watching animals as they burrow or kids as they wiggle through small spaces. And I have a strange love of desserts that have a surprise in the middle.

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Lemon Pound Cake

May 18, 2014
Mir
Cakes, Elegant Desserts, Let Them Eat Cake
10 Comments

For a great portion of my life, my definition of a pound cake came from an Entenmann’s box or a Sara Lee freezer item. These pound cakes came in neat little loaf shapes and I always loved the top part the best. The crumb was also extremely solid and dense, perfect for dipping into chocolate. Mmm. It was good stuff, and I liked it a lot, but I never tasted pound cake from scratch until I was nearly in my thirties. Ooops. I take that back. I’m 25, people!

When I finally did try a homemade pound cake, I was bowled over by the butter notes, so striking and so, well, buttery. Having not grown up with butter (a different story for another time), I took to pound cake like a new mom to caffeine. It was just so amazing, and I was a sucker for the duality of the tightly-packed crumb with the butter undertones.

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Margarita Mini-Bundts

Happy Cinco de Mayo, everyone! I hope you’re reading this with festive food in front of you. It might be early, but how about a margarita? Honestly, I’m going to have to be careful here. If I don’t watch myself, I’ll wind up writing a 20-page essay about the glory of the margarita and never actually get to the dessert I made.

Because margaritas are just…yeah. I don’t have to explain, do I? They’re nice. Let’s leave it at that. But because it’s still morning where I am, I decided to start the day with these little bundt cakes instead.

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Chocolate Birthday Cupcakes

April 28, 2014
Mir
Cakes, Cupcakes and Cheesecakes, Let Them Eat Cake
4 Comments

My baby is two! I can’t believe it. And I know that’s something everyone says, but really, my youngest is tiny. She’s very small for her age and always has been, so I am a little shocked every time I realize how old she’s getting.

Despite her smallness, my daughter can really eat. Every day when I get home from work, she looks at me and says, full of hope, “Want chocolate.” And you know what? I give it to her. Because I totally understand her, and because she’s cute. And because she’ll throw a mean tantrum if I don’t. That’s good parenting in action, people.

So for her birthday, I took the most intense chocolate cake recipe I could think of and made cupcakes out of it. Minnie Mouse cupcakes, to be exact. Because the only thing my daughter loves as much as chocolate is Minnie Mouse.

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Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake

April 27, 2014
Mir
C is for COOKIE!, Cakes, Gluten-Free Goodness, Let Them Eat Cake
4 Comments

Ah, the gluten-free life. It comes with so many challenges. My husband eats a mainly gluten-free diet, and he tends to try some baked good or other and then say, “It’s missing…something.”

To which I reply, “Um…wheat?”

Yep, it’s hard to make him forget just how great that gluten is. Which is why I’m so grateful that along with the recipes I make for him from scratch, there are people out there who make really good gluten-free refrigerated cookie dough. The Immaculate Baking brand is his (and my) favorite. The ingredients are free of chemicals and the cookies are nice and chewy. If you can’t find that brand at your local store, you can substitute two packages of your favorite gluten-free refrigerated cookie dough in this recipe.

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Crumb Cake

April 11, 2014
Mir
Cakes, Dessert for Breakfast, Let Them Eat Cake
0 Comments

A few months back, I was Netflix bingeing episodes of Cake Boss when Buddy and his crew had yet another challenge. A woman came to the bakery from somewhere far away just to pick up her pre-ordered crumb cake, and (gasp!) it wasn’t there. In an exciting and conflict-ridden turn of events, Buddy’s sister sold it by accident.

So Buddy, ever the obliging baker, set about making another crumb cake as fast as he could, promising to be done within the hour. And I watched. Fascinated. Enthralled. I’d kind of forgotten, until that episode, how much I love crumb cake.

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Chocolate Pake

April 7, 2014
Mir
Cakes, Let Them Eat Cake, Pakes and Pookies
10 Comments

Any Drop Dead Diva fans out there? Please? Pretty please?

Because if you’ve seen the show, you know what a pake is. No, that’s not a typo. I’m talking serious pake, kids. As in, a pie-cake hybrid. That’s right! In an episode of the show, a character accidentally invents the pake when two pages of a cookbook get stuck together without her realizing it. The result is rather marvelous. I mean, it’s a cake inside a pie crust. What could be better?

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Chocolate Crumb Babka

April 4, 2014
Mir
Bread Basket, Cakes, Dessert for Breakfast, Let Them Eat Cake
2 Comments

It’s Friday, y’all! In my house, the weekend means babka for breakfast. Allow me to explain.

When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to send a big box of baked goods to us a few times a year. The box was full of her goodies: cookies and cakes, most of them traditional Eastern European specialties. Nestled in the box were always two babkas. For those of you who aren’t familiar, a babka is cake that is actually made from a yeast dough and then swirled with various fillings. The traditional filling is cinnamon sugar, but more modern babkas have chocolate as well

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Golden Peanut Butter Cup Cake

March 30, 2014
Mir
Cakes, Elegant Desserts, Let Them Eat Cake
2 Comments

My son doesn’t like chocolate. Or so he claims. At first, I was grief-stricken when I heard this news. Was he mine?!

Then I realized that he does like chocolate but he doesn’t want to admit to it, for some weird little kid reason. For example, he loves Reese’s peanut butter cups. I can’t bring the telltale orange and yellow packaging anywhere near the house without him begging to have some, puppy eyes and all. But if the chocolate gets too rich, suddenly it’s not his thing anymore.

Which is all totally fine, except that the boy asked for a peanut butter cup cake for his birthday this year. And he wanted it done with yellow cake, not chocolate. As much as my instincts tore me away from this challenge kicking and screaming, I had to obey. I mean, he’s my kid and it’s his birthday. What am I supposed to do?