More cakes!

It's been a cake-y couple of months! Nothing too revolutionary, but I figure I'll post the pictures and let you be the judge.

For Nicole's bithday I made her a chocolate buttermilk cake (it really is my stand-by recipe for chocolate deliciousness!) with cream cheese icing and fresh strawberries. Learned a very important lesson that day... strawberries bleed! The cake was yummy, though, and the filling between the layers was cream cheese with smashed up strawberries mixed into it... le yum.

For my birthday my sister and I made my favourite, carrot cake... loaded with carrots, topped with cream cheese icing, and with pecans for decoration (extra on the side for people like me who wanted tons, but minimal on the cake for those who don't like them!)

Red velvet cupcakes for the wedding shower of some dear friends whose wedding I am in this summer! (Red being one of the key colours in the wedding!)

And last, but not least, a cake for my coworker Mackenzie's sister's engagement party! Far from perfect (that dent above the heart DID get fixed!) but it was short notice, and my first tiered cake. More importantly, however, it was well received, and that's what really matters right?I

So there we go. Some cakey highlights from over the past month!

Birthday Cake Fit for a Best Friend

Monday is my best friend's birthday! He's turning 25... wow... so we're celebrating, but in a low key kinda way. I've kind of hijacked making his birthday cakes for the last couple years (last year was Deanna Troi, the year before was a Pokemon ball... before that I forget, but maybe I didn't make it that year). This year is a more "grown up" cake, no theme, just flavour fusion! So I made him this chocolate peanut butter marble cake from Sugar Plum, and topped it with some makeshift chocolate buttercream.

Not-really-Easter Baking

Made a strawbery rhubarb pie for the first time, and though I botched the lattice it still looked kinda neat, tasted pretty good (my first time trying it too!), and was well received. Got the recipe from Canadian Living, here.

These cute nest cookies are just my usual haystack recipe with a few Cadbury's Mini Eggs on top. They were also well received, but I've gotta be honest when I say I preferred the components separately. Haystacks don't need to be messed with, they're perfect on their own... though they are cute this way.

So that was my non-Easter baking... barely celebrated the holiday, and now it's on to more fun things.

A Merry Starbucks Christmas!

So have I mentioned how awesome it is to work at Starbucks? Because... it's awesome. I started at the end of November, and we discussed Christmas party plans, which were to be post-Christmas celebrations. Christmas happened, New Year's happened... and then all of a sudden it was February! So we decided to have the party this weekend, and me being me I decided to make barista cookies!!!

Chocolate Cupcakes

I am on a cupcake kick. I've always loved them - they're so cute and individual - but I'm especially into them at the moment. Possibly because we sell them at Starbucks so I see/sell them almost every day? Plus I know that mine are better, hehe. So on Sunday I made red velvet cupcakes that were so last minute, and so delicious, they didn't last long enough for me to take pictures of. Today I made chocolate ones with vanilla icing, and they are almost as awesome. These are the ones you will see/hear about today.

In Defense of Cake Mixes

 Fast food is popular for a reason... not that McDonald's necessarily makes a better burger than you can at home on your barbeque (obviously!), but that they're cheaper, easier, and foolproof. By the same token, cake mixes can be incredibly valuable. Tonight I just wanted to make a cake. I don't feel like eating it, I don't have anyone to share it with until tomorrow or the next day, but I don't care... just wanted to slab some pretty coloured icing on a cake and squiggle on some decoration.

So here we go... a 6" round French Vanilla Betty Crocker cake mix, with purple-tinted vanilla icing from a can! Luckily cutting a cake mix in 1/3 is pretty easy... 1/3 of the mix, 100mL of milk/water, 25mL of oil, and 1 egg. Done! A quick mix and I walk away, and come back to a perfect cake, ready for me to ruin with icing doodles.

Cakes

I have always loved making cakes, but have especially gotten into it over the last year. It went from being something I thoroughly enjoyed doing for special occasions to being something I now do just for fun and to relieve stress. Luckily no one complains about having extra cake! I've been meaning to post these for a while, so read on after the jump for the the pictures of cakes.

Carrot Muffins, and More Christmas Presents

Carrot muffins are a weakness of mine, carrot cake one of my favourite treats... with or without cream cheese frosting, and especially with walnuts, I am a sucker for a good bite of carrot-y deliciousness. It's also one of my favourite things to make, so when boyfriend commented I had no good breakfast food on hand I immediately decided that this is what I would make to accomodate him, and indulge myself. I also was looking for a chance to display some of the beautiful new plates my sister got me for Christmas. So voila - carrot muffins! (Recipe after the jump)

Birthday Baking

Wednesday was boyfriend's 24th birthday, so you know what that means... birthday cake! Also, with my beautiful shiny new mixer, I decided cake from scratch and delicious buttercream icing were both in order. So boyfriend got a 6" double layered dark chocolate buttermilk cake with chocolate buttercream and caramel ganache. There was also what was supposed to be caramel buttercream in the middle... but that ended up more like a weird butterscotch fudge and we'll just pretend it didn't happen, because the rest of the cake was oh-so-good.

Baking Catch-Up

So although the blog has been quiet, my kitchen has not. Well, quieter than it sometimes is... but you get the point. So here's where I get you up to speed, completely with pictures and blurbs and all that fun stuff. Shall we go chronologically? I think we shall. (After the jump!)

Had a Holly Jolly Christmas...

It's been a while, but I'm back.. hopefully with a vigor this time! Hope you all had a very happy holiday season... I sure did! First I will sum up my holidays, and my newfound motivation to bake, in one picture. Next, in a future post, I will get the ball rolling with recent baking adventures! Yay!

Lemon cake, and my triumphant return!

I haven't posted since Hallowe'en for a couple reasons... first, I really haven't done much baking since then, and second, I have a busted camera that make photographing the boring things I have made (some plain carrot muffins, some haystacks) incredibly difficult. But this time my baking was being shared with my dear friends Andrew and Kevin, who are the happy owners of a DSLR they let me use. So I bring to you, lemon cake! Or rather, vanilla cake filled with lemon curd iced in buttercream to look (kind of) like a lemon!

Hallowe'en Cookies (and Cake Trial & Error)

The boy is still visiting, and he has decided to go hang out with our friends for Hallowe'en tonight. Me? I am babysitting the cutest little redheaded girl in all of Ottawa, and maybe the world! I'm not big on Hallowe'en, but I don't mind Hallowe'en baking. If I had my icing colours and all that stuff here I would have made sugar cookie zombies, mummies, vampires, and werewolves (this was my original plan) but I loaned them to my sister and won't get them back until tomorrow. So instead we get Hallowe'en Chip Cookies. They're chocolate chip, but with Reese's Pieces mixed in too! It's the best I could come up with, with limited supplies. once again I gave anothe recipe a try... not that it's much different from my usual chocolate chip recipe. They're all pretty similar!

Apple Streusel Cupcakes

October is almost over and I haven't done any baking with apples! Well, aside from my Thanksgiving apple pie... but I don't entirely count that because I make apple pie a couple times a year, every year. So I decided to make some apple muffins and tea for breakfast this morning. However... the thought of drinking tea quickly lost its appeal the more I thought about it, so I drank coffee and the boyfriend drank a cup of chai tea. And the recipe I ended up wanting to make didn't actually have apples in them. So I still haven't baked with apples yet this season... though I still intend to! I do have a cake in mind, but we'll see if I get to it... maybe next week! In the meantime, apple streusel cupcakes from one of my beautiful cookbooks, Cupcakes, Muffins & Baked Goods which I've resolved to make more from. So far so good... these were delicious!

Zebra Brownies

I found out that my love is coming up for a visit tomorrow, and while my attentions would have been better directed toward cleaning the apartment (I did some, I swear!) I decided that some sort of treat was in order. So I made zebra brownies! They're fudgey brownies with cream cheese icing and chocolate drizzled on them and they are... mmmm. So good. A little on the rich side, but who's going to complain? Hopefully he enjoys them as much as I did taste testing them! Normally I'd make my sister's brownie recipe but did not tonight for two reasons, first I didn't need as much as it usually makes, and second I think she'd beat me if I posted it online! She makes them better than anyone else, so I won't bother trying to compete :) The recipe I used is after the jump!

Yarn and Fondant

Pretty birthday cake anyone? My sister and I made this for her friend Marina's birthday, and I'm so excited with how pretty it turned out. To be fair, and to give credit where credit is due, I mostly helped with making buttercream, and with the rolling, tinting, cutting, and smoothing of fondant. She had the cakes in the oven when I got there, and did the final assembly after I left. Regardless, I'm thrilled to have been able to help, and apparently her friend Marina loved her cake! It's a chocolate buttermilk cake (my go-to recipe, which I'll provide after the jump) with chocolate buttercream filling and plain old fondant.


In other news, I'm finally knitting again! I hit a dry spell this summer and really haven't done much of anything besides the occasional discloth. However, since I was asked to make a mug cozy for this same birthday I rose to the challenge. I'm really happy with how it turned out too. The purple yarn is lovely, and I'm pleased that I found a button that suited it. The pattern is available as a Ravelry download, it's called Mug and French Press Jacket, by MK Carroll. The things I've come to love about this pattern (I've made it twice now) is how quickly it knits up, how easy it is to follow, and how amazing it is to block wool to the exact shape you want on the mug. Seriously, wool is amazing. I don't know how I didn't know this earlier in my life! I'm pretty sure the recipient liked this part of her present too, so my mission was accomplished.

Thanksgiving!

It's a week late, but here's the updates on Thanksgiving baking... we did the stuff for my dad's birthday (oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chip cookies, brownies, and nanaimo bars) which he thoroughly enjoyed. We also had banana muffins (same recipe as the cake in the first post), some less-than-successful cranbery muffins, and the traditional pumpkin and apple pies. Pumpkin pie should have had foil on the crust for longer, but the apple pie turned out beautifully and both tasted amazing. I also made pumpkin tarts, the one's from Bakerella's blog! 

Nanaimo Bars & Birthday Wishes

My dad's birthday was yesterday... happy birthday! Dads are shockingly hard to buy for, and every year my sister and I have to bend our brains a bit to come up with something. This year we had a brilliant idea - we're making a care package! We're baking a bunch of his favourite goodies that freeze nicely, and giving him a couple big containers full of them. Cookies, nanaimo bars, haystacks... he'll love it (I hope!). Most of the baking will be done this weekend, and taken over when we visit for Thanksgiving, but my sister and I tried our hands at nanaimo bars lastnight.

Cookies

I love cookies. They're so welcoming, comforting, and they range from rustic to elegant all with a certain compact charm. Though cookies are rarely (if ever) as impressive as a cake or elaborate pastry, I believe that the perfect chocolate chip cookie is a measure of one's baking style and skill.

These are my go-to chocolate chip cookies, my mom's recipe... chewy, not overly sweet, and lots of chocolate chips!

Wikipedia tells me that cookies originated in 7th century Persia, but that they first came to North America in the 1600s, and our standard creamed-butter-and-sugar method cookie became common in the 1700s. Even Wikipedia makes note of the compact appeal of cookies... you can send them, pack them, set them out as bite-sized treats, ice them, sandwich them, dip them... they're endlessly versatile.

Banana Bundt Cake and an Inaugural Post!

So here it is, the first post! Here we have another amateur food blog to further fill the internet with pictures of my baking, cooking, and probably knitting, as well as my rambling thoughts. So welcome to Needle in a Haystack, a blog which as I've said will combine my favourite things and give me a place to put them all.

I thought about starting off by posting some of my favourite baked goodies and knitted projects, things I'm proud of and that would give a good sense of who I am. Instead I decided that the first post should be a fresh project, something to inaugurate this little cyber-nook of mine. The archives can wait for another day. So I present you with today's indulgence, a banana bundt cake with chocolate glaze and walnut topping!