Category: cake

  • Frosty vanilla snowflake cake

    Frosty vanilla snowflake cake

    It had been a while since I felt the burning ambition to decorate a cake. Lord knows I’m all about shortcuts these days — which is why when I saw this in the Kraft Kitchens’ holiday edition I knew this recipe would be quick to bake, slower to decorate. And though the purists may be choking…

  • Chocolate Mousse Igloo

    Chocolate Mousse Igloo

      This chocolate mousse igloo would be the ideal dessert to make with young children, but perhaps not the most sophisticated dessert to serve your adult guests. I decided to make this recipe after seeing a photo for it in one of the Kraft Kitchens magazines, but even before I began the ingredient list made me…

  • Paula Deen’s Pumpkin Gingerbread Trifle

    Paula Deen’s Pumpkin Gingerbread Trifle

      I first discovered the recipe for this trifle months ago. But I knew that the only time I could get away with serving a dessert as decadent, as creamy, as luscious, as gooey, as spicy, as flavourful as this one was during the holiday season. And so I flagged this recipe way back then…

  • Chocolate Gingerbread House Petits Fours

    Chocolate Gingerbread House Petits Fours

      If you are looking for Christmas cheer, you will be disappointed, tonight. I’m rather more Grinch-like than Cindy Lou-like tonight, but with good reason. In less than two months I’ve had bronchitis – twice – and my son’s sick with his own eye and ear infections. I’m nearly at the end of my rope…

  • Chocolate & Zucchini’s Canelés

    Chocolate & Zucchini’s Canelés

      It was love at first bite. Sorry I can’t resist a cheesy play on words. Back to the batter at hand (tee hee). I first made canelés, if you might remember, at Bonnie Gordon’s School of Confectionary Arts. I signed up for the two-day course mainly to learn how to make macarons. And I…

  • New York, New York Super Crumb Cake

    New York, New York Super Crumb Cake

      It may have been seeing the Cake Boss waxing poetic about the huge palmfuls of crumbs on the crumb cake at Carlo’s Bakery on the Food Network, but one Sunday night I was suddenly seized with the feeling that I must make crumb cake. I had never eaten it before, but I imagined it…

  • Almost flourless orange and almond cake with marmalade

    Almost flourless orange and almond cake with marmalade

      I’d be lying if I said I was not impressionable. When I watched “Fast Food Nation,” all I could think about was buying a McChicken. And when I was reading Jane Green’s “From Promises to Keep,” I had barely finished a few chapters when I bought the ingredients to make this Middle-Eastern inspired almost flourless orange…

  • Walnut torte with dark rum syrup

    Walnut torte with dark rum syrup

      This torte is not for the faint of heart. It is dense, it is sticky, it is syrupy sweet. The recipe for this walnut torte comes from Jill O’Connor’s “Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey.” I’ve referred to this book time and time again (Re: Bahama Mama Banana Rum cake; Sticky Toffee Pudding; Cheesecake pops) and…

  • Julia Child’s Reine de Saba

    Julia Child’s Reine de Saba

      I was moved to make the Reine de Saba (Queen of Sheba aka chocolate and almond cake) after watching “Julie & Julia” during which Julie makes this simple, but chic, cake for company. After a pregnancy-long drought of chocolate, I am getting back on the cocoa bandwagon. I know, I know, I have been…

  • Vanilla-berry charlotte

    Vanilla-berry charlotte

      Pretty, right? That’s the main shallow reason I decided to make this. I couldn’t wrap my head around what purpose the ladyfingers would serve other than to hold the cake together.I mean, they weren’t dipped in liqueur or anything so they were going to stay hard.But I decided this would be the perfect (and…