Valentine's Day

A variety of treats for Valentine's Day. The sugar cookies are from a recipe in Dede Wilson's Baker's Field Guide to Christmas Cookies. (That book is far too good to reserve for holiday-season use only.) The Nutella truffles and chocolate-chip cookie dough cheesecake bars are from the blog My Baking Addiction.

Wedding Cupcakes

One of my colleagues was approaching his wedding day, so we had a little party at work to celebrate. I made these cupcakes from Dede Wilson's Wedding Cakes You Can Make. They're white cupcakes with coconut and a lemon-curd filling. For the frosting, I made a white-chocolate buttercream. Nice recipe, and it allowed me to use some of the egg whites I've been accumulating after using egg yolks in ice cream.

Coffee Toffee Chocolate Chunk Cookies

For Lost Lunch Thursday this week, I made a batch of coffee toffee chocolate chunk cookies. (Scroll down for the recipe.) They are the best.

Another Banana Cake

Once again, I was unable to resist the allure of a huge bag of bananas on the dented-and-dinged rack at Stew's. These bananas were very green at the time of purchase a week ago and only now are ripe enough for use in baking. Today, I tried a Banana Cake recipe from the new Dede Wilson birthday-cake book. The cake has some chopped toasted pecans and mini-chocolate chips in it. For filling between the layers, I used some leftover truffle base (dark rum and toasted coconut), and I frosted the cake with a mango-flavored ganache. I really like the voluptuous swirls in the frosting. I think I'll take this to work tomorrow for a belated Lost Lunch Thursday.

I'm not exactly sure what I'll do with the rest of the bananas, but I know I've got several things to bake for before the week is over. No doubt some (most? all?) of it will involve bananas.

Birthday Cake

For Karen's birthday, I knew I had to make a cake that somehow involved chocolate. I decided to try something from Dede Wilson's latest book, The Birthday Cake Book. After perusing some chocolate-cake-with-chocolate-frosting combinations, I decided to make a yellow cake (with miniature chocolate chips in it) covered with chocolate frosting. Everything about the cake and the frosting came together really well, and it sure looked great when it was assembled.

Then we got home kind of late, plus had gotten dessert when we were at dinner. Believe it or not, the cake was never tasted. Knowing that we had plans that would leave us unable to dig in to the cake for a few days, we decided to donate it to the PLTI class this week -- with the promise that I'll make another one next week.

More of the Same

I'm in a baking rut, it seems. I made another pound cake for the PLTI class and cupcakes for "Lost" Lunch Thursday.


The cake is a lemon Bundt, a recipe from a Land O Lakes butter ad. (Shrug. What can I say?) It's pretty minimally lemony (zest and a tablespoon of lemon juice), but it's not a bad pound cake at all. It's moist, it's buttery, it even has a hint of lemon (definitely a background player here, not something right up front).

The cupcakes are from Dede Wilson's Baker's Field Guide to Cupcakes. After last week's sunken white-chocolate cupcakes, I figured I needed some redemption and made Dede's chocolate cupcakes. The cakes are really good. However, the fudge icing I chose to coat them with? Not so much. The icing seemed promising when it was done coming together, but it took on a firm, fudgelike texture almost immediately after being made. On the one hand, it was fine; the frosting tasted great. On the other hand, it was pretty much unworkable. The cupcakes are definitely on the redo list, but next time if I want chocolate icing, I'll make a fluffy chocolate icing.