This week I finally decided to make something i have been wanting to make for a long time. Carrot cake is one of my favorite cakes out there and I have been wanting to try to make it from scratch. But something about it seemed like it would be very difficult to make. Wow was I wrong!!! This recipe I found from the Girl Who Ate Everything, is so easy. Other than the peeling and grating of the carrots it was extremely quick and easy to make. The recipe does suggest using whole wheat flour to give it a nutty flavor, but I just stuck with the simple all-purpose flour. Plus it is the perfect start to great Easter weekend. I mean really what says easter more than a carrot cake.
Suprise Awards!!!
This week I was honored with being awarded three awards for my blog. Suddenly knowing that there are actually people reading my blog out there was very exciting!! I was awarded these awards all from the blog Go Bake Yourself. If you have never visited this blog I highly suggest you do it because it is great!!. The first award I received was the Sunshine Award!
The rules:
- Include the award logo in a post or on your blog
- Answer 10 questions about yourself
- Nominate 10-12 other fabulous bloggers
- Link your nominees to the post and comment on their blogs letting them know they have been nominated
- Share the love and link the person who nominated you
Ten Questions
- Favorite Color: Purple
- Favorite Animal: Dog
- Favorite Number: 9 (don’t ask me why I’m not really sure)
- Favorite Non alcoholic drink: Sweet Tea
- Prefer Facebook or Twitter: Facebook
- My passion: baking of course
- Prefer getting or giving presents: both
- Favorite pattern: plaid
- Favorite Day of the week: Saturday
- Favorite Flower: Rose
I also received the Versatile Baking Award from Go Bake Yourself.
And here are the rules of this awesome award
- Thank the person who gave you this award.
- Include a link to their blog.
- Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly.
- Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award.
- Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.
- In the same post, include this set of rules.
- Inform each nominated blogger of their nomination by posting a comment on each of their blogs.
So for the seven things about me
- I was originally going to name this blog Blonde Baker, but the name was already take. I eventually found that blog and am now following it.
- I used to be a cheerleader, but quit before my final varsity year was over.
- I am one of the few people in the world who does not like thin mints.
- Even though everything in my blog that I bake is extremely unhealthy, I want to study nutrition in college and then become a nutritionist.
- The deadline for deciding where to go to college is basically a month away and I am still completely confused on which school I should pick.
- I’ve been to the Galapagos Islands
- I am deathly afraid of clowns!
Finally, I was also awarded the ABC of Me Award (aka the awesome blog content award).
The rules are simply to share facts about yourself using each letter of the alphabet before sharing the award along.
Acting- I do theatre
Baking- obviously I bake
Cheerleading- I used to be a cheerleader
Dance- I used to think that I was a good dancer ( I now know this isn’t true)
England- I went to London last summer.
Fish- I used to want to be a marine biologist when I grow up.
Galapagos Islands- I have been there
Horror Movies- Best Genre Ever!!!!
Ice Cream- I love it
Jewelry- LOVE IT
Kind- I would like to think I am
L- my name begins with this letter
Monkeys- I LOVE monkeys
Nutrition- I want to major in this in college
Oreo Ice Cream- Probably my favorite food!
Painting- something I really wish I could do (sadly I’m not artistic at all!)
Quaker Steak and Lube- One of my favorite restaurants
River- The River was one of my favorite shows!
Summer- My favorite season
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo- Best book ever!
U have no idea how hard this is!!!!
Virgo- My sign
Wedding Crashers- One of my favorite movies
X- rays- Have never gotten one
Yinz- I’m from Pittsburgh
Zoologist- I also considered majoring in this field
“Now I know my ABCs next time won’t you sing with me”
Now I know I cheated on a few but you have no clue how hard that really is.
I would now like to pass all of these awards on to some very deserving bloggers out there:
- Sally Baking Addiction
- Just Baked
- Food Is my Life
- The Cake Doll
- Bakin’ and Cabbage
- Butter Baking
- Pink Stripes
- Reality Bites Baking
- Honey, You Baked
- Sticky Sunday Baker
Congrats to you all!
Posted in Uncategorized
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Cream Cheese Twix Blondies
So I have been extremely busy!!! So busy that last week as you may have noticed I didn’t even have any time to bake anything and share a recipe. I was in a play at my school last week, and if any of you are in theatre you know how crazy show week gets. The last show was last night, so what better to get myself out of this post show funk then to bake up some delicious dessert.
Since the last recipe I shared was so good, I thought I would continue with that theme of candy chocolate chip cookie bars. This time I took a candy bar that is even better than peppermint patties, twix!! These blondies are absolutely delicious. They are gooey and just amazing. They were just the treat I needed to cheer me up after being done with a great show!
Click here for the recipe from Pip and Ebby.
A Horrible Artist’s Attempts (and fails) at Fondant
All of those baking shows are very misleading!!!! They make it seem like it is so easy and that anyone can do it. Just through the peice of fondant over the cake and it will magically look good. So because of this my mom and i decided that we should try to take a Wilton Cake Decorating class with fondant. Let me just tell you it is much more difficult then it looks. It is very hard to get the fondant to go around the cake perfectly. Plus fondant just doesn’t taste good!!! It is just the wrong texture for cake. And I know that supposively marshmallow fondant is supposed to be much better then store bough fondant, but I have tried to make that and it just turned into an absolute disgusting disaster (even though the recipe said it was super easy.) So now everytime i try to practice with my fondant skills I have to put a lot of icing on so that I can just peel the fondant off when I go to eat the cake.
Here are some example of my skills after quite a bit of practice (yes I know they are still not very good, but I would like to think that they aren’t too bad).
Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars with a Suprise Inside: Peppermint Patties
I love chocolate chip cookies, but I am always looking for something to make them a little more exciting. So when they are stuffed with peppermint patties, I’d say that is exciting enough. Two layers of chocolate chip cookie bar dough with peppermint patties placed in the middle. Heaven!!
How could something with this many peppermint patties in something not be perfect.
Don’t they look amazing!!
The recipe can be found here at Picky Palate.
I choose to make them thinner and used a 9 x 13 pan (because I don’t have a 8×8 pan), it took double the amount of peppermint patties, so of course it was still great!
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake
Chocolate chip cookie dough and cheesecake together? Two of the greatest things put together, could it get any better than that? So when I saw this recipe for it, I knew I had to make it, it just looked so good. My chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes were such a hit, so I thought this would be too. And it was!! I always thought that nothing could beat Oreo cheesecake, but this one definitely gives it some competition, and may even be better.
Now I know there are cracks in it and some imperfections, but it was still amazing. Just look at the globs of cookie dough inside the cheesecake, how could it not be amazing?
I’m not going to lie, it was very hard having to wait for the cheesecake to chill over night because it looked so good, but it was all worth it in the end.
Click for the recipe from Mel’s Kitchen Cafe
Caramel Banana Cake!!
What to do with four ripe bananas? This is the question I faced today. I love banana bread, but I thought that was a bit boring and I like to make try to always make things that I have never made before. So I decided to make Caramel Banana Cake. And yes it really is as good as it sounds. This cake is so moist and if you are a fan of banana bread like me you will love it!!
Look how beautiful it is!! In the original recipe it didn’t have an icing with it and I can see why, it’s so pretty even without icing. But to me a cake just isn’t a cake without frosting, so I added some caramel frosting.
Now it didn’t look nearly as good after putting the frosting on it. But when it came to taste it was totally worth sacrificing the look.
The recipe for the Caramel Banana cake can be found at The Kitchn.
The caramel buttercream I used is found at Spice is Nice. ( I omitted the salt)
Confetti Cheesecake Cupcakes with Cake Batter Frosting
One of my biggest guilty pleasures is Pillsbury Funfetti cake. I know that it is a boxed cake mix, but I still think that they are so good. So I went off to find a funfetti cake from scratch, hoping that it would be even better than the boxed version. Sure it would take more effort, but that just means a better finished product, right? Well while I was searching for a good recipe, something caught my eye that I just couldn’t say no to. Confetti Cheesecake Cupcakes with cake batter frosting. The frosting alone made me what then insanely. There was no way I could pass them up. And let’s just say that I am seriously happy I didn’t. These are one of the best cupcakes I have ever made!!!!
A funfetti base, cheesecake on top, with the absolute best frosting in the entire world!!!!!! These cupcakes are amazing…. and I’m not kidding this frosting is amazing. i would suggest just doubling the recipe for it and eating the other half alone! It’s that good.
Click here for recipe from Confessions of a Cookbook Queen.
Now the recipe says to use your favorite funfetti cake batter, mine can be found at Sweet Tooth.
Oreo Cupcakes
Now I’m not a big fan of oreos by themselves, but once they are put into something I LOVE them. Cookies and Cream ice cream is by far my favorite ice cream, and I always get the oreo cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory. So I decided to make Oreo Cupcakes. I used a white cake base from Taste of Home and then folded in about 2 cups of crushed oreos. And they lived up completely to my expectations. 
Even without any icing they could have been amazing but with with the addition of butter icing from BHG these cupcakes were complete and perfected.
Smores Cookies
The only good thing about camping??? Of course it’s the smores!!! I am not an outdoorsy girl, but I am perfectly willing to do all the camping I have to just to get some smores. But now I don’t have to comprimise for my smores because I’ve found these cookie. Stuffed with chocolate, marshmallow and graham crackers. Could cookies get any better then that. The answer is NO!!! I think these might even be better then the real thing!
Click here for recipe from Baked Perfection
Posted in Cookie, Uncategorized
Tagged Chocolate, cookie, graham cracker, marshmallow, smores
2 Comments
sugarcravingbaker 