Monthly Archives: July 2011

July 31, 2011 · 8:02 pm

Happy Birthday Kim!

I love having an occasion to bake for. The best occasion, of course, is for a birthday! My friend Kim’s birthday was the other day and since my first attempt at making a birthday cake was almost a failure, I knew that I needed to try again.

Kim requested a white cake with white buttercream frosting. Simple enough, right? I spent some time researching different recipes and different decorating techniques. I came up with two recipes that I thought would work well.

I started with the Best Birthday Cake recipe from one of my favorite blogs, Smitten Kitchen. I looked at a lot of recipes online, and decided that this would be the best white (yellow) make.

The two 9” round layers came out perfect. The first layer went on the cake stand:

I then added The Best Buttercream from another favorite blog of mine, I Am Baker:

Spread it out

And added the second cake layer

Crumb coat

And time to decorate!

My original plan was to cover the whole cake in roses. After I finished the top, I knew I’d never have enough buttercream to cover the sides as well. So I just got creative.

I added some sugar crystals to the sides just to give it a little color.

I was really happy with how the cake turned out. I thought it looked pretty good and tasted good as well.

The trickiest part was trying to figure out how to get the cake to Kim’s house. Let’s just say that I drove very carefully!

Happy Birthday Kim!!!!

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July 28, 2011 · 7:40 pm

Chocolate Meringues

For a recent girls night, I was asked to make a low-fat dessert. After googling “healthy desserts” and not being very happy with the results, I remembered that I should consult one of my favorite recipe blogs. Skinny Taste not only has healthy recipes- they’re also delicious!

I went straight to Gina’s dessert page and found a cookie that looked like a dream come true- Chocolate Chip Clouds.

I really wish that I had made these sooner. They are soooo good! They are also so easy to make!

I started with these six ingredients: egg whites, cream of tartar, sugar, vanilla cocoa powder and chocolate chips.

And a very simple recipe:

I began whipping the egg whites with my paddle attachment.

When it seemed to be taking too long to whip up- I switched to this whisk attachment.

When that didn’t seem to work- I looked at the recipe again and read the comment section. It seemed that a lot of people did not have any luck using egg whites from a carton. I immediately switched to actual egg whites (3 to be exact) as the reviewers recommended.