Banana Bundt Cake

One of the problems with being a blog slacker is that I tend to upload photos when I take them and always have the best intentions of posting entries right away so that I don't do things like forget where I got a recipe from. Like this banana Bundt cake. I am positive that the glaze came from Fearless Baking by Elinor Klivans. Chalk up one more for hopelessness!

Pumpkin Cupcakes

Autumn means that it's time to bake with apples, cranberries, and pumpkin. I had some leftover chocolate frosting from my commission cake, and I thought it would go well with pumpkin. So it turned to Julie Hasson's 125 Best Cupcake Recipes. Good combination. 

Now I need to make something with cranberries.

Commission

Every now and again, I get a commission to make a cake. I think that's pretty cool; being a good baker is a nice reputation to have, that's for sure. For this commission, the request came in the afternoon, and the cake was needed the next day. I went with the yellow cake from the Magnolia Bakery cookbooks, then used the frosting and toasted coconut-pecan "macaroon" blend from the Junior's yellow-cake recipe. By all reports, the cake was a hit, which leaves me hopeful for future commissions. 

Double-Apple Bundt Cake

This Double-Apple Bundt Cake comes from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours. The batter calls for both a grated apple and some apple butter (hence the double-apple reference). While the cake turned out pretty well, my one second thought about it is that I could have baked it in a slightly smaller tube pan. The final cake seemed a little height-challenged.

Birthday Cake

For her birthday this year, Claire requested a repeat of a cake I'd made previously but didn't like that much. Fortunately, I was inspired to make this chocolate cake, which appeared in an issue of Everyday Food. I was missing an ingredient for the ganache that was used to ice the cake, so I used to the lighter, fluffier chocolate frosting from the Magnolia Bakery cookbooks. The cake tasted great, but I guess I should have cleaned up the frosting smears on the cake-dome platter!

Applesauce Cake

I made this applesauce cake with homemade apple-raspberry sauce (hence the pinkish tinge to the cake). For the topping, I made a traditional cream cheese frosting and added some toasted pecans.

The Best Muffins

I'm not always necessarily fond of Cook's Illustrated's self-aggrandizing need to label their recipes "best." I think that there can be wiggle room for tweaking and customizing recipes here and there. Besides, what is best to one palate is maybe not someone else's cup of tea.

That said, I used a CI recipe to make a batch of Mocha Chip Muffins, and they are amazing. They taste great (not too sweet, nice coffee flavor), and look terrific (big domed top, firm moist crumb). The batter is stiffer than other muffin batters I've baked with lately. I was a little afraid that I was overfilling the muffin tin, but that stiff batter worked out: The muffins didn't overflow the pan, just baked up nice and tall.

I made the Mocha Chip Muffins (photo above) for a meeting I attended tonight, and I've got a batch of plain chocolate-chip muffins (photo below) in the oven to go to the skating rink tomorrow morning.

I will be using this recipe again. Probably frequently.