Banana Cake

Saturday night I attended a birthday gathering for my (Step mom in law?) Husband's Step Mom's 50th birthday.  I decided I would make some kind of a cake for the occasion, but I figured there would already be a birthday cake present.  As I pondered baking ideas for the event, my eyes wandered to the counter where I spotted these:

Over-ripe inspiration!  Banana cake it is!

Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
4 mashed bananas
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon

First odd, mix together the butter and sugar, then add in your eggs one at a time.  This is actually a banana bread recipe that I made more "cake-like" by adding another egg and sifting the flour.  And adding frosting, that seems to help too ;)

After that's mixed together well, add in your bananas and vanilla.

Sift your flour and add it into the mixing bowl, mixing at medium low-speed.  Along with the rest of thew ingredients.  Mix until it comes together evenly.

Bake for about 1 hour (I would check it at 50 minutes as ovens tend to vary) when the middle is set and a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean, it is done!

This cake also gave me a chance to break in my new bread pan from Williams and Sonoma, courtesy of my friend Wilcox. Thanks dude ;)

Next, I whipped up a quick vanilla butter cream frosting, and got to work.....

I managed to only eat, you know, like 5 tablespoons of frosting out of the bowl....

I sprinkled the top of my cake with some shredded white chocolate a little cocoa powder, and then moved it to a clean, pretty plate.

This was pretty delicious!  I'm sorry I never got a picture of it sliced, I mean to take one this morning of my leftover piece, but I remembered after I ate it for breakfast.  Woops.

Happy Baking!

A Clipped Greetings Cookie Platter



Happy Sunday!  Today I had the pleasure of attending a "Card Party" held by my dear friend Kyle and her company Clipped Greetings.  She suggested over a few beverages that I bake some cookies for the occasion, and bring along some business cards to promote my blog.  Seeing as I did not have any business cards, I slapped some stickers on some cute card stock, and got to baking up some tasty treats....

I wanted to make some personalized cookies to showcase the "Favor" type baking I've been doing lately, so I used my trusty old white-chocolate sugar recipe and my lettering cookie cutter to come up with some brand-name cookies. 

  

Then I whipped up some Royal Icing to do a bit of light decorating.

I came up with a few swirl patterns, a couple of flowers, and one pair of scissors that looks suspiciously like a lop-sided flower, but close right?

 I also made some Gingersnaps and some chocolate spritz cookies to complete my platter, those recipes will be up in the next couple of days....

 Ta-Da! 

After I had them all wrapped up for the trip, I noticed I'd broken one of the sugar cookies without even walking out the door.  Sigh.  Cookie-transportation is by far the most stressful part of baking.

Stay tuned for a bunch of new posts this week (and probably one more today!) It's been a busy baking weekend!

Salted Caramel Ice Cream

Hey blog people! So I guess when I said I would be baking more often now that the wedding is over, I think I underestimated how difficult it would be to get back in the swing of real life after almost 2 weeks in a tropical paradise.  Sigh. 

But!  Worry not, I have some fun cookies up my sleeve which I will share in the coming days, for now, I give you my first experiment with frozen desserts, which go great with baked desserts. so it made it on my cookie blog. I've been drooling over the Salted Caramel Ice Cream that my foodie friend Wilcox blogged about some months ago, and decided I would give it a try.  Check out her post on the subject here: http://morecheesemorechocolate.com/2010/05/28/salted-caramel-ice-cream/

Ingredients:
2 cups whole milk, divided
1½ cups sugar
4 tablespoonssalted butter
½ teaspoon sea salt
1 cups heavy cream
5 large egg yolks
3/4 teaspoon vanilla


 First off, set up an ice bath with 1 cup of your whole milk and set it aside for later use.  Then spread your sugar out in a large-ish sauce pan and heat on med-high until it starts to caramelize.  Stir it around until its nice and smooth and caramelly :)

 Once the sugar is all melted, remove it from the heat, and stir in your butter and cream until smooth.  If the sugar starts to harden again, place the saucepan back over a low heat.

 Pour a little bit of the mixture in with your egg yolks, and beat until its nice and smooth.  The add the eggs and 1 cup of the milk (not the ice bath milk) and cook until the mixture thickens over medium-high heat.

 Finally, strain the warm custard mixture into your ice-bath milk, and stir until you have a creamy delicious looking custard.

Yum.

 Then you have to chill it for 8 hours.  Except I got impatient and only chilled it for like, 4 hours.  And it was just fine. I'm always skeptical of long "chill" times.

Finally, it's time to bust out the handy dandy ice cream maker I received from the fabulous Collins family at our Bridal shower.  This thing is pretty awesome.

 All you  have to do is freeze the bowl overnight, and then press "on."  Ice cream making for dummies.

 Let it churn until it has thickened to your liking.....

Then into the freezer to firm up.  We enjoyed this with an apple pie that my sister baked for us, which I neglected to photograph. Rats.  Anyway, this stuff is deadly.  It was actually described recently as F*$@ing Bomb. 

Make some!  You won't regret it!