Yummy Stuff!!

I've started to bake more often in the last month or so and besides the obvious detrimental effects to my waist size I don't know why I don't bake more often. I think it is because so often I find myself baking these huge batches of treats and I had no one to share them with. PJ doesn't eat baked goods and while the girls will usually eat anything sweet, as a Mother I really don't want them eating that much of it. But recently I've had more dinner guests than I've had in the past and with my Sister and Brother moving closer I have had more people to hand off/force the treats on.

One of the recent things I've baked was this absolutely wonderful Raspberry-Buttermilk Cake from Deb at Smitten Kitchen. This cake is the perfect type of cake to make for no reason at all. It's easy to whip up and easily adaptable to what ever type of berries (or rhubarb) you have on hand. I made it twice in one week and was a major hit with everyone. It comes out looking beautiful with no effort at all, but sadly I have no pictures. It was gobbled up way to fast! But Deb has some beautiful pictures at her blog along with the recipe.

After the cake I made a yummy Strawberry-Rhubarb crumble. It was my first time cooking with rhubarb and now I'm hooked on the stuff. I used the filling recipe from Smitten Kitchen here and the crust from this recipe on Recipezaar (I wanted to use up some rolled oats I had).

The following week I had a half flat of local strawberries that were getting close to going bad and had to be used up quick. So I made Smitten Kitchen's Strawberries and Dumplings for breakfast for the girls and myself. Maggie loved it but Bridget while crazy about strawberries did not liked them cooked. I thought it was pretty tasty myself, but probably not something I would make again.

This last Sunday I was wanting to make some cupcakes and came across a recipe for Self Frosting Nutella Cupcakes. As most of you know we are HUGE fans of Nutella in this house, in fact Bridget has a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich just about every day. So of course I had plenty of Nutella on hand. This were a cinch to make up and since the Nutella is swirled throughout there is no need to frost them. These were not overly sweet, the cake part was dense, rich and buttery like a pound cake. Most of the sweetness came from the Nutella. These would be perfect for breakfast with some coffee, which exactly what I did the next day.

Nutella Frosted Cupcakes from Baking Bites
10 tbsp(140 grams) butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cups (200 grams) sifted all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
Nutella, approx. 1/3 cup

Preheat oven to 325F. Line 12 muffin tins with paper liners.
Cream together butter and sugar until light, 2 minutes. Add in eggs one at a time, until fully incorporated. Don’t worry if the batter doesn’t look smooth. Add vanilla. Stir in flour, salt and baking powder until batter is uniform and no flour remains.
Using an ice cream scoop, fill each muffin liner with batter. They should be 3/4 full, if you’re not using a scoop. Top each cake with 1 1/2 tsp Nutella. Swirl Nutella in with a toothpick, making sure to fold a bit of batter up over the nutella.
Bake for 20 minutes.
Remove to a wire rack to cool completely.
Makes 12.

Last night my Mom was over and I wanted to take advantage of having an extra person to feed. That morning I had come across this recipe over at One Ordinary Day and was wanting to try it out. Now I'm not a baking snob, I usually prefer to make stuff from scratch but I am not above using a box mix if the recipe calls for it. I didn't have a yellow cake mix on hand but I did have a box of Trader Joe's Madagascar Vanilla Bean cake mix so I used that instead. I think it actually worked out great, I loved the flecks of vanilla bean all throughout the cake. I only used about half the brown sugar-cinnamon mixture the recipe called for since I didn't want it overly sweet and a whole cup seemed like a lot and in the end it was still plenty sweet with only half. The cake was very,very moist. This also made a delicious breakfast the next day and I also think if you were having company over for breakfast or a brunch this would be great to serve, way less work than actually making cinnamon rolls.

Cinnamon Roll Cake from One Ordinary Day

(first seen and drooled over at 3 B’s)

boxed yellow cake mix

4 eggs

3/4 c. oil

1 c. sour cream

1 c. light brown sugar

1 Tbsp. cinnamon

2 c. powdered sugar

4 Tbsp. milk

Mix cake mix, eggs, oil, and sour cream by hand in a large bowl. Pour into greased 13×9″ baking pan.

In a separate bowl, combine brown sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle all over top of cake mix and swirl with a knife. Bake at 325 degrees for 40 minutes. (I took mine out at 35 minutes and Ingrid said she baked her cake for 30 minutes.) Let cake cool for 10-15 minutes before icing.

Prepare icing by stirring together powdered sugar and milk. Pour over warm cake.