Category Archives: Baked Elements

Peanut Butter Chocolate Whirligigs

Peanut butter is my downfall. So delicious! So versatile! So nutritious (in small quantities)!

So of course I had to make these cute cookies!

They were actually a lot of work. They look so simple and taste so delicious, but they were the most effort of all of my recent baking exploits. Mostly because they needed so many cooling steps. But also because some of those steps really benefitted from 4 hands.

Would I make them again? Eh, probably not. You can get delicious peanut butter flavor for a fraction of the effort with Ovenly’s/Smitten Kitchen‘s Salted Peanut Butter cookies. But these look fancier.

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Caramel Coconut Cluster Bars

There are few things in life that make me as happy as a delicious bar cookie. Shortbread on the bottom. Some sort of caramel layer. Nuts or coconut or seeds. And chocolate. Dipped in chocolate, drizzled in chocolate, painted with chocolate. Any of these options are okay.

My usual go-to bar for this type of craving is Alice Medrich’s Toffee Bar. Seriously delicious. Seriously addictive. Seriously easy to make. Like really really easy to make.

But my friends’ daughters have all been talking about Girl Scout cookie orders and I was looking through my Baked books for some ideas and then I found it: Samoa-inspired bar with coconut.

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Lime Angel Food Cake with Lime Glaze

Something strange happens to me around birthdays. It has to do with cakes. And my firm belief that every birthday is better – significantly better – with a cake made just for you.

So when my husband’s birthday came around, I wanted to make something special. First I was going to make an ice cream cake with homemade salted caramel ice cream. But I didn’t have time.

So I decided to go back to his childhood favorite and attempt to make it from scratch. And his childhood favorite was angel food cake. Which everyone knows is best made from a box. Because it calls for 10 – count them, 10! – egg whites. And a lot of whisking. And is prone to not rising properly. And being finicky in other ways. And generally risking disappointment on the big day.

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Antique Caramel Cake

Not all cakes are planned. Well, at least, not in advance. Yesterday as I was leaving school a colleague mentioned it was another colleague’s birthday today. And since we have a joint meeting every Wednesday, she was going to bring a cake. So I immediately said: I’ll bring a cake!

But which cake?

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Spicy Brownies

In search for an easy, big, nut-free, and interesting cake to bring to feed my students on Tuesday, I was intrigued by this recipe in the cinnamon section of Baked Elements. Spicy brownies with cinnamon and a chili kick? Sounded like something worth trying.

Of course, I don’t have ancho chile powder. Don’t know if they sell it here, what it’d be called, or where I would even start to look for it. So my friend Google suggested I substitute a mix of cumin and cayenne pepper, which I did. But then when I tried the batter it had a mega kick and I thought I might kill the students with spice. Then I was convinced they wouldn’t like the brownies because none of them liked the ginger rhubarb cake I love so much. I attribute that to them having less sophisticated palates 🙂

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(Photo credit: Sabrina; clockwise from top: chocolate chip cookies, Ali’s cupcakes, vanilla malt bundt cake, spicy brownies, cinnamon carrot cake)

Well, I was surprised. They all loved it. Some of them thought they weren’t spicy at all. Others got over the initial shock and then reached for seconds, thirds … claiming the kick at the back of the throat was addictive. A colleague tried one of the last remaining ones and declared it to be the perfect blend of a burger and a brownie. Needless to say, they were completely consumed before the end of the day.

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Classic Carrot Cake

My carrot cake recipe (from the Hummingbird Cafe cookbook) is a bit famous. It’s a perennial favorite and is always requested for friends’ and colleagues’ birthdays. It’s gotten to the point where I lobby – hard – for other cakes just because I get bored making carrot cake all the time.

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(Photo credit: Sabrina)

For my school birthday party, where I had committed to bringing baked goods for all of my students (in honor of my birthday and the last class period before exams), I thought I’d try another carrot cake recipe. One of my students is deathly allergic to peanuts – and avoids all nuts just to be sure – and this recipe calls for walnuts (easy enough to leave out) and coconut, which I thought would add a little something that might go missing if I left out the walnuts.

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Oopsy Daisy Cake (Milk Chocolate and Peanut Butter)

I have what some may call an addiction to peanut butter. I import incredible quantities of Trader Joe’s peanut butter (only one ingredient: peanuts!) every time I return from the US. And I put in requests from everyone who visits me.

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I think the only thing I like better than peanut butter is peanut butter with chocolate. My favorite indulgence as a child was peanut-butter & nutella sandwiches. Who am I kidding – it’s still my favorite indulgence! I just indulge slightly less frequently.

So when I got the new Baked cookbook and there’s a whole section on baking with peanuts and peanut butter, I had to make their chocolate peanut butter cake.

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It is amazing.

Make it.

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Vanilla Bean Malt Cake

I was looking for a simple cake to offset some of the more elaborate confections I made for my birthday party. This one, a simple vanilla Bundt cake with malted milk powder as a secret ingredient, was just the one. It was a huge hit, with the flavor depth curtesy of the malted milk powder, the crumb, and the vanilla glaze…

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It goes well with ice cream, with whipped cream, with fresh fruit or just by itself. It can be a dessert, but also a coffee cake for an afternoon tea.

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Tunnel of Hazelnut Fudge Cake

I had a minor breakdown on Thursday. We were going to have a “thank goodness it’s the Friday afternoon before vacation” party in one of my classes and a student (very politely) requested chocolate cake. In fact, in a moment of procrastination, he even sent me some google image results of the type of cake he would like me to bring. Which inspired me to make German Chocolate Cake. As explained by Julie in Vintage Cakes, German Chocolate Cake isn’t German at all. It was invented by a guy whose last name was German, so it was called German’s Chocolate Cake. And because people are lazy when they speak, it got changed to German Chocolate Cake.

But her recipe was for a rolled up cake and I was not in the mood to try to roll a cake. Plus I realized after searching 5 cookbooks that I actually don’t have any dessicated coconut. So out with the German Chocolate Cake idea.

So I turned to the Baked boys and their chocolate chapter in Baked Elements. The title, picture and description of this cake immediately drew me in. A tunnel of hazelnut fudge?! Plus the very last line in the note is “make thi scake – you won’t be disappointed.”

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Banana Cake with Coffee Walnut Buttercream

It was a familiar situation: it was Thursday evening and I had committed to bringing a cake to school. Instead of going home and baking, we went out to dinner. So then it was 10 pm on a Thursday, I still had a cake to bake and frost, and I had to get up at 6 the next day.

So I decided to try a new recipe from Vintage Cakes to use up some of my frozen ripe bananas and make the cake seem “healthy.” The batter was easy to make and in no time my cakes were in the oven. Then I turned the page to the buttercream recipe. It wanted me to grind the walnuts into a paste, then it called for corn syrup and bourbon. Looked like a good recipe, but not a good one to attempt at 11 pm on a school night. So instead I turned to a stand-by buttercream from Baked and added a couple of additions. Below, I’ve included both buttercream options.

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