Strawberry cake with jam and lemon curd

Question: What to do when you have a ton of fruit salad that's taking up all the room in your fridge? Aaaaaand you need to make a birthday cake for someone at your mom's work?

Answer: Strawberry cake with home-made strawberry and blueberry jam and lemon curd left over from the blueberry cake you made on Saturday!!

Strawberry Cake with Jam and Lemon Curd
Recipe adapted from Cooking by Moonlight

Ingredients:
(for the cake)

• 2 cups ap flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp baking powder

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
• 1 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups strawberries, mashed

(for the jam)

• 2 cups strawberries and blueberries (you can pretty much use any berry combo)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• water

Lemon Curd Recipe Here

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease and flour 2 9-inch round cake pans.
Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder and set aside.
Mix together the softened butter and sugar until combined. (I let my butter soften in a dish on the stove while it's preheating). Then add the eggs and vanilla and stir to combine.
Pour the dry into the wet and stir until there are just a few small lumps. The batter will be stiff compared to many cake batters, that's okay... the strawberries will loosen it up.
Wash the strawberries and remove their green tops. Using a potato masher or fork mash the strawberries into strawberry soup. Pour the crushed strawberries, juices and all, into the cake batter and stir just until evenly distributed.
Pour the batter evenly into the two pans and use a knife or spatula to spread the batter evenly in the pans.
Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes or until a cake tester comes out with just a few small crumbs attached.

Make the lemon curd according to the directions in the above link.

Make the jam by putting the berries, sugar, and a splash of water in a saucepan and cooking over medium heat for about 25 minutes, stirring pretty often. Don't put the heat too high or it will burn the bottom of the pan.

Once the cake, jam, and curd are cool, cut each cake layer in 2 to yield 4 layers. Put lemon curd in between two layers and jam in one layer and on the top of the cake.

I think tomorrow I am going to sift a little powdered sugar on top just to be fancy, this cake really doesn't need an icing, it's got all kinds of delicious spreads going on. I could see a ganache or something since strawberry and chocolate go so well together but I'm going to let this one be for now.

Mini- muffin madness

Let the mini-muffin baking begin!! My mom's school is having a breakfast tomorrow and I am in charge of baking the muffins. Four kinds in two hours, the only thing that held me up was that I only have two mini-muffin pans and I was making the batter way faster than I could bake and cool the previous batch. So I got a little backed up, but they came out great! I also ran out of muffin papers so I had to start spraying the pans with Pam and you know how that goes when blueberries are involved.

Honey Orange Corn Muffin with Raspberry Jam
Adapted from Eat Good For Life

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 4 egg yolks
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1/8 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• Zest 1 orange
• 1 tsp vanilla

• 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
• 3/4 cup yellow cornmeal
• 2 teaspoons baking powder

• raspberry jam

Method:

Preheat oven to 450 and paper 2 mini-muffin tins.
Mix all wet ingredients in one bowl and all dry in another.
Pour dry into wet and combine, don't over-mix.
Fill 32 of the muffin cups half way full with batter, then spoon a dollop (about 1/2 tsp) of jam on top of the batter and then spoon more batter on top of the jam.
Don't use too much jam or it will just spill out all over the pan and burn.
Bake at 450 for 3 minutes, then turn down to 400 and bake another 6 minutes or so, until they bounce bak to the touch.

Chocolate Chip Muffins
Adapted from Crumbs and Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups ap flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt

• 2 egg yolks
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup oil
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 cup chocolate chips

Method:

Preheat oven to 450 and paper mini muffin tins.
Mix all dry ingredients in one bowl and all wet in another, then pour dry into wet and stir until just combined.
Stir in chocolate chips.
Fill as many cups as you can to the top, or a little over.
Put them in the oven at 450 for 3 mins, then turn down the oven to 400 and bake for another 6 mins or so.

Carrot Cinnamon Muffins
Adapted from My Fudo

Ingredients:

• 2 cups ap flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

• 2 1/2 cups grated carrots (one bag of baby carrots buzzed up in cuisinart)
• 4 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 cup canola oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Method:

Preheat oven to 450 and paper mini muffin pan.
Buzz up the carrots in your cuisinart or grate them, one bag of baby carrots yields about 2 1/2 cups.
Mix the carrots with the rest of the wet ingredients and set aside.
Mix all dry ingredients and add to wet, stir to combine.
Pour batter into prepared pan and bake on 450 for 3 mins.
Turn down oven to 400 and bake for another 6 mins or so.

Blueberry Lemon Muffins
Adapted from Kitchen Lane

Ingredients:

• 2 cups ap flour
• 2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• zest of one lemon

• 2 cups blueberries

Method:

Preheat oven to 450 and paper your mini-muffin pans.
Mix all dry ingredients in one bowl and all wet in another, add dry to wet and combine.
Mix in blueberries, don't over-mix batter.
Pour into prepared pan and bake at 450 for 3 mins.
Turn oven down to 400 and bake another 7 mins or so, until muffins bounce back to the touch.

Notes:

*Some of the batters came out a little bit wetter or dryer than I like, if it was too wet I added a little bit of ap flour, and if too dry I added a little extra milk.

**I have been baking my muffins starting out really hot for a few mins and then turning them down to finish because it makes them get big and crusty on top and nice and high.

Peanut Butter Banana Muffins with Raspberry Jam

It's peanut buller jelly time!! So my friend's boyfriend takes peanut butter and jelly to work every day for lunch (yeah I know) and that was my inspiration for this muffin. If Joe was going to eat a muffin this would be it. I'm thinking about peanut butter jelly cupcakes for his birthday.

This recipe comes from lovefoodeat. It's pretty healthy. I didn't add any sugar because I put in extra banana and I backed off on the peanut butter a bit. It's all whole wheat flour and it's actually vegan because of the flax meal instead of eggs.

I experimented with a new baking technique on this recipe. I am now preheating the oven to 425 and baking the muffins for a few minutes to get a nice crust and a puffy muffin, then I turn it down to 400 or so and bake them the rest of the way. So far good results!! Really nice crusty top. Which I loooooove. This might be my new thing.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup oats
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda

2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tbsp ground flax seed + 4 tbsp water
3 mashed bananas
2 tbsp peanut butter
1 cup water

jelly of your choosing- I used raspberry

flax seeds (for sprinkling on top)

Method:

Preheat oven to 425
Mix flaxseed powder and water, keep it aside. Combine all the dry ingredients and mix well (1st paragraph). In a separate bowl, mash bananas and add all other wet ingredients (2nd paragraph) and mix well. Pour the dry ingredients into wet ingredients and mix till everything is combined. Do not over mix. Grease your 12 cup muffin tin and pour about 2 tbsp of batter into each cup. Then spoon in 1 tsp of jelly into each cup. Then with your remaining batter cover the jelly taking care to spread the batter evenly between each cup- don't run out. If you want bigger puffier muffins only use 9 cups. Sprinkle some whole flax seeds on top for looks. Bake the muffins for 3 minutes at 425 and then turn the temp town to 400 and bake for another 12 minutes or until they bounce back to the touch. Let them cool and enjoy!!

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.