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.

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!

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.

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!