Yellow Cake

My friend jokingly said she'd trade puppy-sitting over the weekend for cupcakes. I agreed before she'd even finished her sentence because 1) I love making cupcakes; and 2) Brownie needs a play date this weekend while Lito and I are in Napa.  She requested Yellow and Vanilla Cake with Vanilla Buttercream. Done and done.

Meanwhile on the other side of the universe, a friend asked me for a recipe for Yellow Cake. Sort of. So I'm stretching this into an opportunity to share an awesome recipe for Yellow Cake and to show off pictures of hot pink butter cream. Yum!

Yellow Cake 
Recipe Adapted from Smitten Kitchen (Her blog is 100% better/fancier/cooler than mine)

Here's What You Need:

4 cups cake flour (I use the kind in the pink box, because it comes in a pink box)
2 rounded teaspoons of baking powder
1.5 teaspoons of baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 sticks of butter
2 cups of sugar!! [sorry I left this out! how could I forget!]
1 tablespoon vanilla
4 eggs
2 cups buttermilk

Here's What You Do:


1. Set the oven at 350 & get your pans ready. (I pretty much always use the foil, paper-lined cupcake cups)
2. Sift all the dry ingredients in a bowl.
3. In your stand mixer, whip up the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then add the vanilla. Then add the eggs. Then add the buttermilk. Do not freak out. The batter will look...curdled is the best word for it.

4. Add the flour mixture in small batches to the liquid mixture until everything is mixed together.
5. Scoop the batter into your cupcake pans (I use a spring-loaded ice cream scooper). Bake for 17 minutes.

 6. Nom.

Rose Cake

I know you've seen this before, but...

maybe you haven't seen it quite like this: Rose Cake

In honor of having some really beautiful women over to my house this evening, I made a rose cake (like the whirly-gig cake, only better I think). This is strawberry with strawberry filling (homemade) and bourbon vanilla buttercream frosting. What do you think? 

Chomp.

Bah.

So, here I am, expecting to be able to post on the magnificent maiden voyage of the kitchenaid mixer, and it was lovely, truly, so I should post on that, but instead, I'm going to tell you about some really lovely pretty cupcakes that didn't taste that great. That's right. They were okay. And maybe it should be preceded by the following caveat: I have no baking/culinary training whatsoever, other than what I've picked up along my quest to eat delicious desserts.

See? Aren't they pretty? The frosting tasted (tastes) fantastic BTW, but I knew it would -- butter cream frosting always tastes good.

So I tried Martha Stewart's buttermilk cupcake recipe. Yep, I'm calling out the queen of all things domestic and lovely. But here's the deal: other people have tried this recipe and liked it, so, ya know, maybe don't write her off entirely. Maybe just think before you make these particular cupcakes.
It looks like a Ferris Wheel of delicious cake.

So here's the scoop: the recipe, first of all, said that it yielded 36 cupcakes. When I made it, I came out with over 48, for a family of two, that is way too effing many cupcakes. Even for me.

Second of all, the cake wasn't dry. But it wasn't moist either. Someone explain to me how a cake that calls for EIGHT eggs (five whole and three additional yolks) can not taste like a dreamy dream loaf? Perhaps the eggs were the problem. The cake was dense but kind of stuck to the roof of my mouth. Irritating.

But absolutely lovely. No?

Shout Out to My Mom, Part I

Last week my cute mom came out for a little visit and we did all things delicious during her stay, including a trip to the local farmer's market, where we couldn't resist picking up a small flat of strawberries. And they smelled so good. I mean, if smell-0-vision had ever made it past the dream phase, I would be permanently tuned in to fresh strawberry -- they smelled that good.

And since we had more strawberries than we could hope to eat in a lifetime, my mom showed me how to make strawberry freezer jam. I'm converted. It was really easy and it's SO GOOD.