TWD: Allspice Crumb Muffins

It's Tuesday. It's cold, wet, rainy and windy today. Unlike yesterday which was clear, warm and dry. Typical Northern California weather...we went from summer to winter in one day. The poor trees are always so confused...do we turn colors or just skip that and fall straight to the ground? It's the same every year, but every year we act like we've never experienced it before! Roads are flooded and trees are falling...I think I'll stay inside and bake the day away.

This week's TWD selection was chosen by Kayte of Grandma's Kitchen Table.
The fall smelling and tasting Allspice Crumb Muffins can be found on pages 16 and 17 of Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

Not much playing around with this recipe except to substitute buttermilk for the whole milk and adding a few raspberries to half the muffins.

My kids will love these for breakfast!

Don't forget to check out what the others have baked up over here.

Thanks for stopping by.

See...I have been busy :)

I had a few orders and made some cakes:

Some friends of mine had a small church ceremony for family prior to taking off to Cabo San Lucas for their wedding celebration. They had a little lunch reception at a restaurant here in Roseville and I made their wedding cake.

Bottom tier is a 2 layer 10" vanilla buttermilk cake with fresh strawberry filling and vanilla SMBC. Top tier is a 2 layer 8" vanilla buttermilk cake with fresh lemon curd filling. Same frosting. Brown ribbon and scrolling topped it off. The top is a little wonky but not bad for my first wedding cake!

I made a birthday cake for an 8 year old boy born on the Fourth of July!!

10" chocolate cake with strawberry filling on the bottom and 6" vanilla cake with strawberry filling on the top. All iced with vanilla SMBC. Fondant stars.

A first birthday cake for Addi:


10" vanilla cake with fresh strawberries and vanilla SMBC. Addi's mom asked for a pink, black and green color theme....and Addi got her own little smash cake on the top. The ladybug is vanilla cake as well. All fondant accessories and all edible except for the antennae.

I love the ladybug trail.


(Pictures of this cake were taken with my point and shoot camera....my apologies for the quality :) )

A Princess cake for Ella's 4th birthday:

I didn't really know what I was doing here and thanks to all the inspiring princess cakes over at cake central.

The towers are rice crispie treats covered with homemade MMF. Next time I would let the treats sit out a little longer to harden. They were very soft and kind of wobbly...the kids loved them sliced up though!

And finally....a baby shower cake:

I was given a link to the bedding the mom had picked out and a cake flavor and that was it! The decorating was totally up to me. I think I do better with specifics...I looked at too many green and brown cakes and couldn't narrow it down!!

This is a 10" 2 layer spice cake (yay for spice!) with cream cheese frosting on the bottom. The top layer is 1/2 spice and 1/2 chocolate with cream cheese frosting. Homemade MMF decorations. The mom-to-be was happy with her cake and I think it matched the bedding perfectly.

Anyone have any tips for smooth icing a cake? I'm up for anything.

Ok...I'm gearing up for next week...4 dozen chocolate and vanilla cupcakes for a wedding rehearsal dinner and a 16th birthday cake! Wish me luck :)

Thanks for stopping by.

TWD: Chocolate Un-Crunched Caramel Tart

Now known as: GOOD LORD, SOMEONE TAKE THIS AWAY FROM ME IMMEDIATELY!

This week's super spectacular yum-yum was chosen by Carla at Chocolate Moosey.

Really, no words are needed....

I could have eaten the whole thing myself. Luckily my friend Michele (of the lemon, persimmon and fig trees that I so often take from) was having a birthday last week so I was able to off load half of the tart to her. Two pieces to another friend with a birthday...and then I ate the rest!

The only change I made was to leave the nuts out so my tart was un-crunched and super smooth.

I will definitely be making this again, and again, and again. I need to get myself some tiny tart pans....that would be awesome!

Don't forget to stop by here to check out the other bakers.

Thanks for stopping by.

See...I did make them

These Flaky Apple Turnover were last week's TWD pick. Julie from Someone's in the Kitchen chose them for her hosting week.

My 5 yr old and I picked the apples from a neighbor's tree.

We put all the rotten apples in a pile for them to pick up. (I would have done it but I only brought along one bag...for MY apples)

We were very careful of the little bird and her nest when picking.

Chopped them up.

Dropped a raspberry on a few.

Chopped up some caramels on a few.

Made some into little bundles.

Sprinkled the tops with raw sugar and.....

....there you go. Passed some out to the neighbors with the apple tree. We loved them.

I have 9 tucked away in the freezer to be consumed at a later date.

Thanks for stopping by.

It's still Tuesday isn't it?

I know, I know...total slacker. I really have a good excuse....but who really cares? I'm here now and it's not like I haven't been baking. I have...but finding the time to take the photos off the camera...onto the computer, and then sitting down and actually writing something? That's the hard part!

These Cottage Cheese Pufflets that Jacque from Daisy Lane Cakes chose for this week's TWD adventure were not my favorite thing to make. But that's the whole idea of this baking group, right? To venture out and try new things. Don't get me wrong, the taste is lovely I just get frustrated when something is not going the way I think it should be going! :)

Should have chilled the dough more...even more than I did. I used apricot jam for the filling and my kids don't care what they look like. :)

Don't forget to stop by the website to see what the others have created.

Thanks for stopping by.

TWD: Classic Banana Bundt Cake

A little something from Wikipedia:

A Bundt cake is a dessert cake cooked in a Bundt pan forming it into a distinctive ring shape. Bundt cake is pronounced "bunt", the "d" being silent.

The bundt may have originated from the German Gugelhupf, a ring shaped cake. The word bundt appears as early as 1901 in The Settlement Cookbook, written by Lizzie Kander of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Bundt is used instead of bund in a recipe for "Bundt Kuchen."^[1] The aluminum Bundt pan is a variation of ceramic cake forms and was trademarked in 1950 by H. David Dalquist, founder of Nordic Ware, based in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, who developed it at the request of members of the Hadassah Society's chapter in Minneapolis, Minnesota. ^[2] They were interested in a pan that could be used to make bundkuchen (sometimes called kugelhopf or Gugelhupf), a popular German and Austrian coffee cake. Similar cakes were made in Europe in Germany, Austria and Hungary with similar traditional kugelhopf pans. The old-world pans, with fluted and grooved sides, made of delicate ceramic or cast iron, were heavy and therefore difficult to use. He modified some existing Scandinavian pan designs and fashioned the pan out of aluminum.

Since introduction, more than 50 million Bundt pans have been sold by the Nordic Ware company.

The women of the Hadassah Society called them "bund pans". The German word bund in bundkuchen originated from bundling or wrapping the cake's dough around the pan's center hole^[3] (in German the final d is pronounced like a t). Dalquist trademarked the word bundt, and Pillsbury licensed the name in 1970 for a line of cake mixes.

National Bundt Pan day is November 15.^[5]

And there you have it...a little history on the bundt.

Mary of The Food Librarian already knows the history of the bundt because she loves, loves, loves the bundt cake! It is pretty perfect. It's portable, feeds quite a few people, not too messy and baked in one pan.

I love them too and with school starting up soon...I'll be making and naming them again. (For the PTC meetings :) )

Thanks Mary for picking this simple but dee-lish cake for this week's TWD.

I subbed plain Greek yogurt for the sour cream and dusted the top with powdered sugar. I am taking this baby camping with us this weekend so it's cooling it's heels in the freezer.

Don't forget to stop by here to check out what the others have baked.

Thanks for stopping by.

And the secret ingredient is....

....Rosemary!

Whoulda' thought? I admit, I consider rosemary to be more of an herb for savory uses...not so much the sweet things. But I have reconsidered.

I found this recipe for Rosemary-Lemon Sandwich Cookies over on the Better Homes and Garden site. I had (still have) such an over-abundance of meyer lemon juice that I was searching for something lemony and different to use them up. I didn't want lemon bars again...or lemon bread. (I made 2 of Ina's loaves) I was looking for something different.

These cookies are wonderful! Not too sweet with just a hint of the rosemary coming through. They are basically a tender lemon sugar cookie sandwiched with the to-die-for mixture of lemon curd and mascarpone cheese.

I didn't make my own lemon curd because I had a jar of TJ's curd in the pantry.

I could down this mixture in one sitting...no problem!

I made the cookies a head of time and then just put them in a ziploc in the freezer for an opportunity to present itself. The opportunity was last night. A appetizer and cocktail get together with some old friends from high school. I brought these little gems along with the mallow cookies I made (another post, another time). Both were a big hit.

I loved that these were made in one bowl....less dishes! Super easy. I think next time I might actually sprinkle a little coarse salt on the top of the cookies before putting them in the oven. It would have cut the sweetness of the filling a little and brought out the rosemary a bit more.

....because I will be making these again, for sure!

Thanks for stopping by.

**Update....a friend suggested these cookies could be made into thumbprints! I agree. Indent the cookies before putting them in the oven and when they come out and cool....fill with the lemon curd/mascarpone filling. HEAVEN!