Movember Cupcakes

Several of my colleagues are participating in Movember. What’s Movember, you ask? Well, in order to raise awareness of Men’s Health and funds for prostate cancer research, they’re growing moustaches in the month of November. Well, some of them are trying to, at least. I uh.. don’t have the right hormones to participate directly, so when I saw the Manly Cupcake challenge at C&C Cakery, I thought, “Cupcakes. Now there’s something I can do.”

The rules are pretty simple. You have to post your recipe, pictures, and links to the challenge details and prize sponsors on your blog.

Here are the sponsors.

The Manly Cupcake Contest Prize Sponsor’s Include:

I figure that I’ll support my coworkers in their endeavour. You can donate to their campaign at their mo space.

Ok, preamble done. Let’s bake!

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Ginger Cheesecake with Gingerbread Crust

I’m a little late on this post, but I baked the cake early! This week is another free choice week with the heavenly cake bakers. My husband had a halloween potluck at work on October 28, and he was tasked with dessert. I’m the dessert person in our house, so he asked if I could make something. I gave him the list of unbaked cakes, and told him to pick something. He headed straight for the cheesecakes, and came up with this one.

Aren't they cute?

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Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake

I had quite a conversation about the name of this cake with a friend/coworker and my husband. The friend came over to make use of some tools and (my husband’s, not my) expertise with replacing the rotors on his (girlfriend’s) car. After the guys took the car for a test drive, they came inside to chat, and I offered up some cake. The two of them ganged up on me a bit over the title of the cake. The exchange went something like this:

“What kind of cake is it?”
“Swedish pear and almond cream cake”
“Does it have Swedish pears in it?”
“No, Bartlett pears.”
“Well, does it have cream in it?”
“er.. no..”
“What about almonds?”
“Well, it has ‘almond cream’ in it.”
“Then you should call it Swedish … pear … and … almond cream … cake, not Swedish pear … and almond … cream cake.”

So, when we went out for dinner later with this couple later, and the girlfriend asked what kind of cake it was this weekend, I was very explicit in my pauses in the title. πŸ˜›

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The Bostini

This weekend’s choice with the heavenly cake bakers was The Bostini. This cake is supposed to be a deconstruction of a boston cream pie. I’m not sure if I’ve ever actually had Boston Cream Pie, but I have had Boston Cream doughnuts from Tim Hortons. I can say with certainty that this is nothing like those, and I can’t say that’s a bad thing. Heck, their chocolate glaze doesn’t even taste like it has any chocolate in it.

Yum!

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Angel Spice Cake

First, I just wanted to say thanks for all of your lovely comments on our kitchen pictures. It’s somewhat gratifying to know that our efforts weren’t just to our own tastes, but other people like the look of the changes. πŸ™‚

This week’s selection with the Heavenly Cake Bakers group is angel food cake “any way you like it”. Rose provides a recipe for a single egg white, telling you that it will scale up to 1 egg white per cup of pan capacity. Since I always seem to have a stash of egg whites in the freezer, I decided to base the size of my cake on how many egg whites I needed to use up. I had about 300 grams worth, so I multiplied the base by 10. For my version, I decided to add a few spices and see how it tasted as a spice cake.

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Kitchen Before and After

I’ve got a few pictures to share. Note that there are still a couple of small things to finish up in the kitchen (baseboard near the dining room, trim around the exterior door, and we’re waiting on an 18″ deep cabinet to put in the passage way to the dining room), but the majority of the work is done. These aren’t the best pictures, but I’ve decided not to wait any longer to get the ‘perfect’ ones.

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Many Splendored Quick Bread

Banananas from the freezer

You know what I like about being lazy? I can wait for the other bloggers in the heavenly cake bakers group to post their thoughts on something before I even decide to bake it. Plus, I can get ideas on what to tweak so that I’ll like the outcome better. This week’s selection is the “Many Splendored” quick bread. I’m not sure what “splendored” is supposed to mean, and since Firefox’s spell check doesn’t recognize it, I suspect I’m not the only one. πŸ˜‰ This is a ‘cake’ with zucchini, carrots, oatmeal and bananas. Maybe those are the splendours referred to in the title?

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Followup Post with Pictures

So… I think I’ve been walking around in some sort of a daze the last day or so. I couldn’t connect my camera earlier this week to download my pictures, because I was using the wrong cable. Whoops. Who knew that a “charge only” cable for a blackberry wouldn’t work to transfer data off a camera. Duh. I had even checked to make sure I wasn’t using the wrong cable, but apparently I’m blind.

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Catching up with the Heavenly Cake Bakers

Since I can’t seem to get my computer to recognize my camera, I’m going to have to fly mostly blind (no/few pictures) this week. It’s been a hectic couple of weeks at our place, so I missed blogging last weekend’s cake, and forgot to take many pictures of this weekend’s cake.

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Apple Caramel Charlotte

Who could resist a cake with a name like that? Yes, it does have 7 pages of instructions, and is made up of a biscuit, apricot preserves, poached apples, a caramel, a custard, a meringue, whipped cream, and a glaze… but it sounds heavenly, right? Besides, like Katya, I “signed up for this because I like heavily involved, ridiculously detailed baking projects, right?”

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