Molly's birthday cake

I made a banana cake with cream cheese icing for Molly's surprise birthday party!  We had a great time last night celebrating Mole's birthday at Gravers Lane Gallery, where Molly works.

The first time I made this cake I brought some to Molly at work.  She told me it was her new favorite cake and she wanted it for her birthday.  That was months ago, but I didn't forget.

Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Icing

Adapted from White On Rice Couple

Cake Ingredients:

• 3 c Flour 1 T Baking Powder
• 1/2 t Salt 
• 1/2 t Nutmeg 
• 1 c (2 sticks) unsalted Butter, room temp 
• 1 1/2 c Brown Sugar 
• 8 Egg Yolks 
• 1/2 c Canola Oil 
• 1 T Molasses 
• 8 ripe Bananas

Icing Ingredients:

• 8 oz. package of Cream Cheese
• 2 sticks Butter
• 3 c Powdered Sugar
• 1 tsp Vanilla

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 and grease and flour two 9" cake pans and one tall 4" wedding cake top if you want the double layer look like I did for Molly's cake.
Mash bananas and set aside.
Mix flour, b powder, salt, and nutmeg and set aside.
In the bowl of your stand mixer beat the butter on high until fluffy.
Add sugar and cream with the butter.
Add egg yolks and mix just til combined.
Add canola and molasses and mix til combined.
Add dry ingredients to mixer and mix just til combined.
Add bananas and mix just til combined.
Pour batter into cake tins.
Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, the cakes are done when they are firm to the touch and a knife comes out clean from the center.  My little 4" took a bit longer than the 9" cakes because it was so thick.
While the cake is cooling make your icing.
Beat the butter and cream cheese in a mixer until fluffy, then add powdered sugar one cup at a time beating well and then add vanilla.
Once the cake is cool cut the 4" cake top into 2 separate layers.

Ice your cake and then decorate with some icing chocolate (melted semisweet chocolate chips and a little butter) in your piping bag.  My mom threw on a little mexican heather and some lantana for color.

Daphne's 1st birthday cake

I made this cake for my friend Sylvia's daughter's 1st birthday party.  It's lemon curd with cream cheese icing.  I like this cake because it's nice for summer and everyone really loves the zing of the lemon curd.  The cake itself is a pretty simple orange juice cake that is very moist and tastes great with any kind of icing.  In this case it really lets the lemon curd shine.  And who doesn't love cream cheese icing?  That also goes really well with lemon curd.  They have a complementary tang.

This cake needed to feed 25 people and I'm not super keen on double stacked sheet cakes so I used
2- 12" rounds and 2- 9" rounds.  I tripled the cake recipe, made one batch of lemon curd, and doubled the icing recipe.  I had the perfect amounts of everything- I like to have a little bit of everything left over in case I need to touch something up or just to save in the freezer.

I layered lemon curd in between the 2- 12"s and the 2- 9"s but between the 12" cake and the 9" cake I just spread a nice layer of cream cheese icing.  One thing that I did to make serving the cake easier is I put a tinfoil covered cardboard cake round in between the 9" and 12" cake layers.  This way the top cake can be cut and served, they can remove the cardboard round and then cut the bottom cake.  I put lemon curd on the very top, piped dots around the edges with the cream cheese icing, and wrote on top of the cake with melted butter and semisweet chocolate chips.  Lastly, I threw on some sliced strawberries for color.

Lemon Curd Cake
Recipe from The Night Kitchen Bakery

• Lemon curd
• Yellow cake
• Cream cheese icing

Phil's birthday cake

It's Phil's birthday!!  Happy birthday to one of the greatest dads I know.  For this special occasion I made one of the Keitel-Sosnov family's favorite cakes, the chocolate mocha cake.  It's a simple classic chocolate cake with a coffee kick and one of the greatest chocolate icings ever.

Chocolate Mocha Cake with Mocha Icing
Recipe from the Chestnut Hill Spice Shop

Ingredients:

(cake)

• 3 1/2 cups ap flour
• 1 1/2 cups cocoa
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp b powder
• 4 tsp b soda

• 2 cups milk + 2 Tbsp lemon juice
• 4 eggs
• 4 cups sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup canola oil
• 2 cups hot coffee

(icing)

• 1 stick butter
• 1 stick margarine
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 Tbsp coffee
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 2 c powdered sugar
• splash of milk

Method:

(cake)
Preheat oven to 350 and grease and parchment 2- 9" cake pans plus at least one 12 cup muffin pan.  Sift together dry ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.  In the stand mixer mix oil, sugar, eggs, and vanilla.  Add dry ingredients alternating with the buttermilk in a few additions.  Add hot coffee all at once and mix til combined.  Pour batter 3/4 full into the cake pans and muffin tins, don't over-fill.  Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until cakes bounce back to the touch and a knife comes out clean.  Try to let the cakes cool completely before removing them from the pan.  Loosen the sides with a knife because this cake tends to stick- hence the parchment paper.

(icing) 
Once the cakes have cooled beat the butter and the margarine in the stand mixer until light and creamy. Add vanilla, cinnamon, coffee, and then one at a time add the sugar and cocoa.  Beat to combine in between additions.  Last add the milk just to loosen up the texture.

I drew a fish on top of my cake with some melted semisweet chocolate chips mixed with butter in my piping bag.  Phil caught us a lot of delicious blue fish when we were at the shore last week and cooked us an amazing meal of baked blue fish with garlic and fingerling potatoes.  Thanks for the fish Phil, I hope you liked your cake!!

Nora's baking too!

My sister Nora sent me this recipe and a picture of the cake that she made for her friend's birthday.  Nora likes very complex desserts, like when she made the tye-dye cake or this cake which has cookie dough baked in the middle!  The recipe calls for cupcakes but Nora just made it as a cake instead.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cake
Adapted from All Recipes

Ingredients:

(for the cookie center)

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips

(for the cake)

• 1 (18.25 ounce) box chocolate cake mix
• 1 1/3 cups water
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 3 eggs

Method:

Make the cookie batter

Whisk together the flour, baking soda, and sea salt; set aside. Beat the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar with an electric mixer in a large bowl until smooth. Add 1 egg and the vanilla extract and beat until smooth. Mix in the flour mixture until just incorporated. Fold in the chocolate chips; mixing just enough to evenly combine. Form the dough into tablespoon-sized balls; place onto a baking sheet, and freeze until solid, about 2 hours.

Make the cake batter
Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour two 9-inch cake pans, set aside.
Beat 3 eggs in a large bowl with an electric mixer to break up. Add the cake mix, water, and canola oil; continue beating for 2 minutes on medium speed. Pour batter into prepared cake pans. Place some frozen cookie dough balls on the top center of each cake.  Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the cake portion of the cake (not the cookie dough ball) comes out clean, about 30-35minutes (check cake box for cooking time). Cool in the pans for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.

Assembly

Using your favorite fudgey choclate icing (home-made or store bought) frost the top of one cake layer and then place the second cake layer on top, then frost the top of the second layer and the sides.  Decorate with peanut butter chips, like Nora did, and write your happy b-day message on top.

Lemon Curd Cake

Happy Birthday Jenn!!

This is the quintessential spring cake. For some reason it's a big hit at baby showers. If you like lemon, this is the only cake for you. The flavor combinations are perfect, the cake is subtle and lets the lemon curd and cream cheese icing shine. And you know I love that it's the easiest damn cake in the entire world to make. I made the lemon curd, cake, and cream cheese icing in an hour plus baking time. AN HOUR. Just get yourself organized and use your kitchen aid well and you too can bust out the perfect cake in one hour. This doesn't include my favorite part though- assembling the cake and decorating it. That can take me about 30 minutes. It all depends on how fancy we're getting with the decorations.

Yellow Cake Recipe Here

Lemon Curd Recipe Here

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

8 oz cream cheese
8 oz butter (2 sticks) @ room temp
1 tsp vanilla
3 c powdered sugar

Method:

Cream the butter and cream cheese in your electric mixer.
Add the vanilla.
Add the powdered sugar 1/2 cup at a time. Watch out cuz it's going to blow all over the place. That's why you're adding it 1/2 cup at a time. I add it when the mixer is off and then turn it on low and mix between each addition.

Assembling the cake:

Everything should be room temp or slightly still chilled from the fridge- basically don't ice a hot cake and don't use hot lemon curd. Let it all cool down.
Cut each of your cakes in 2 horizontally giving you 4 total layers. (I've been really into 4 layers lately).
Give the cream cheese icing a quick beat in the mixer to get it nice and fluffy- don't just ice with it right out of the fridge.
Ice the sides with a light layer of icing first- a base coat if you will. Just get it all covered.
In between each layer of cake spread cream cheese icing and then lemon curd on top of that.
On the very top, again, icing then lemon curd so that the top is yellow and we can write on the curd with icing.
I'm leaving the sides of this cake un-iced so you can see the layers.
Then I just did a little piping around the top edge and embellished a little.

The traditional way to assemble this cake is leave it in 2 layers, put lemon curd in the middle, ice the outsides and the top with cream cheese and then put a final coat of curd over the top of the cake. The white icing under the curd makes it look very yellow.

Have fun with it, decorate with strawberries or fresh flowers or icing roses. Swiss dots are fun too. You can also add a little food coloring to some of the icing and write on the cake, cream cheese icing is a good consistency for that.

Lauren's Birthday Cake

This cake is a standard at our house. When you just feel like making something easy and delish this is the cake for you. It's always a big hit and it has so many possibilities. Sometimes we do layers of ganache, this time I did ganache and raspberry jam. You can definitely do lemon curd layers, whipped cream and fruit, a mousse, yadda yadda...

Here's the recipe for the cake and ganache, and here is the lemon curd recipe should you choose to go that route.