Sugar Covered Cranberries

This weekend was my families annual cookie-baking weekend. Every year the women in my family get together before Christmas and bake. I don't mean bake a couple dozen cookies and call it a day. I mean bake over 2000 cookies, bake until we were covered in powdered sugar (okay, that only happened to me), bake until the thought of cookies made us cringe, bake until we literally couldn't bake any more!

Deep Dish Pecan Pie

This summer we went on vacation in SC. While we were there we took a day trip to Charleston. We shopped the market, walked down King Street, and visited Rainbow Row. Everything was great, but the one thing I remember the most, the one thing that I have dreams about (sometimes romantic) was the bourbon pecan pie from Kaminsky's.

Turtle Cheesecake

Earlier in the month I had a slight mishap. I may or may not have scortched the bottom of a pan with sugar that I was cooking..... Who knew that electric cooktops could get so hot?! Needless to say I was a little nervouse to make anything involving cooked sugar. However, my mom mentioned making caramel and chocolate sauce and I couldn't get those two things out of my head. So I put on my big girl apron and went to work making a delicious caramel sauce.

Apple Pie Bars

It's that time again people, apple picking season!!!!!!!!! I don't think you understand just how excited I get knowing that I can make a trip up to Carter's Mountain and pick an awesome variety of apples. I know what you're thinking, she's only in it for the apple cider donuts, which is definitely a big part of why I go. But being able to watch my son run/trip up and down the rows of apple trees is the real reason I go. He was so excited to be able to walk on his own, and pick his own apples (with a little help from his uncle). I admit it was a little difficult explaining why the apples already on the ground weren't good, but he got the idea after a little while.We picked fuji and jonagold then we went to the general store to pick up some cider and apple butter.I already have plans to go again a little later in the season!

Wedding 'Party' Cake

Two weeks ago and girl from my work came to me about a cake. She explained that her friend was getting married, but it was going to be small so her a bunch of her girlfriends were throwing her a reception before to celebrate. She told me they wanted a two-tiered cake that could pass as a wedding cake, but without all the frills. I told her I could do it and asked her to give me a little direction in terms of color and flavor, but she let me take the reigns when it cake to the design.

Chocolate Cake for 26 years!

One of the newest members of our creative assistant team, Allison, had her birthday on Friday. When she first started I was introduced to her as the baker. She immediately mentioned her birthday, so I marked it in my mental calendar to make sure I made something for her. When the week of her birthday finally came around I was pretty clueless as to what kind of cake I wanted to make. I asked her what flavors she likes, to which she answered 'everything.' Although that gave me free reign as to the flavor combinations, it almost gave me a little too much freedom.

Strawberry Cream Pie

My dessert-a-week order has been going on for about 3 months now. It's been a lot of fun, but it's also been a little difficult coming up with new, creative desserts that will please the family. I've found out the they LOVE key lime pie, aren't that into cheesecake, and might get duel citizenship just to get more Nanaimo Bars. Since it is summer time, I've been trying to incorporate seasonal fruit desserts, which is why I decided on this next dessert.

Fluffy and Light Biscuits

The search is over!!! After almost a year of searching for the perfect biscuit recipe, (which included a lot of failed attempts) I have found what I think is the BEST recipe. These biscuits remind you of the ones you get at your favorite hole-in-the-wall diner, but could never figure out how to recreate at home. There are a few people I have to thank for this accomplishment. My dad, who found the recipe while rifling through the King Arthur Flour catalog, my mom for braving the local Food Lion to find White Lily self-rising flour, and my family for being my guinea pigs throughout this entire process.

Turtle Pie

AKA Caramel-Chocolate-Whipped Cream heaven. I wish I had made this dessert 5 years ago, so I could've made one every month since then. I got the idea from my brother, so I have to give him MAD props for bringing this delicious dessert into my life. He had a version of this pie at one of his favorite restaurants (which is now closed) and had been asking me for a while to make it. Actually, the pie at the restaurant was banoffee pie, which he asked the waiter if the bananas could be removed and replaced with candied pecans (I know, that sounds like an excellent trade!!) So finally, after a couple months of not so subtle hints from my brother, I decided to make it.

I found a recipe for Banoffee Pie and then went from there. The layer of toffee is thick and gooey, followed by a thin layer of homemade chocolate sauce (which is a lot easier to make than you might think) and a sprinkling of salted pecans. All topped with a mound of whipped cream and drizzles of more chocolate and caramel sauce. This dessert definitely isn't for the faint of heart! Make sure you have room for the sweet, sweet goodness because you will not want to stop once you start. Funny enough, my brother wasn't there to enjoy the final product, but I'm sure he's kicking himself for missing out on this!

Turtle Pie (adapted from Saveur)

2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 stick butter, melted

1 stick butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 can sweetened condensed milk

1/4 cup chocolate sauce
caramel sauce
 2-3 cups whipped cream

1. Preheat oven to 350. Combine graham cracker crumbs and melted butter. Press into a greased 9" pie pan. Bake for 13 minutes. Take pie out and cool completely.

2. Melt butter in a saucepan. Add the sugar and allow to melt. Add the condensed milk and bring to a boil. The mixture should darken slightly. Cook for 5 minutes and then pour into cooled pie shell.

3. Chill pie at least 1 hour, or until toffee is firm. Pour the chocolate sauce over the toffee layer. Top with the whipped cream and then drizzle more chocolate and caramel sauce over the top.

Black and White Cake

So one of my less than fantastic qualities is that I'm extremely forgetful. Not in a I forget to feed my child kind of way, but more like I make a grocery list and then forget to take it with me, or I tell myself that I need to get gas in the morning then I wake up a 1/2 hour late with an empty tank. But I'm pretty sure it's the small things that are the most frustrating. I absolutely hate when I've planned to make a certain dessert and forgot to pick up the MAIN ingredient, which is happened so often to me that I've stopped keeping track. Or when I have to make seven trips downstairs to get everything I need fora recipe, instead of remembering everything and going down once.

Where is this post going, you wonder? Well, I you might have noticed, I took a slight hiatus from posts, because of my crazy life, and now that I'm finally back in the groove, I realized how many desserts I've made over the past month that I completely forgot about. And this cake is exhibit A. This was back in early May, when I had two birthday cake orders. One for chocolate, and one for funfetti. Well silly me, made funfetti cake without the funfetti the first time around so I had vanilla cake that needed to be eaten. Then when I made the chocolate cake I got it in my mind that I wanted to make a black and white cake with the leftover vanilla and that is how this cake was born.

This cake is really pretty and simple (two adjectives that I love!) I used a simple Chocolate Buttercream to ice and did a small border around the top to complete the look. Now don't think you can eat a slice of this yourself, even if you do cut it thin. It is definitely a dessert to be shared! I hope you try it out, everyone will be so impressed by the height alone.

You can find the recipe for my funfetti cake (minus the sprinkles of course) here
And my chocolate cake here

Key Lime Pie

Key lime pie is one of my favorite non-chocolate desserts. I first made it a couple years back on one of our family trips to Edisto. We were all wanting a dessert, but were so full of shrimp and grits that we knew we couldn't handle anything too heavy. That's when I thought of the key lime pie my Grandma had made the week before. It was light and refreshing and perfect for the beach. I called her up and she listed of the ingredients (from memory, of course). I hurried over to the Piggly Wiggly (the only store on the island) and quickly got to work.

Nanaimo Bar

Last week I got my first regular order for desserts. A woman at work has been feeling kind of guilty lately for working late and her inability to bake. So she came to me with the idea of having me bake a dessert for her family each week. She's allowing me to decide on the dessert, the only constraint she had was nothing too nutty (her son isn't in to the nuts...poor child). So far I've made them a peanut butter mousse pie (so I may have ignored the one constraint, whoops) and this dessert These.

Spring Petal Cake

Last year, around this time, I was reading The Pioneer Woman's blog like it was my job. Every morning I would open up Safari (yes, that's what I use!) and would go to her blog and gawk at all of the delicious recipes she would post. Every now and then she would give a shot out the other bloggers by featuring their posts. She did an Easter round up post, and that's when I fell in love with the Easter Egg Cake. A beautiful cake with pretty pastels and perfect for the beginning of spring.

Homemade Funfetti Cake

It was one of my friend's birthday at work today and what goes better with a birthday celebration than homemade funfetti cake? ( I know, liquor, but it was the middle of the day people!) I had gotten some inspiration from this awesome cake, but decided that may have been a little too much so I scaled the sprinkle percentage down. I used this white cake recipe that I've been in love with and just included the addition of about 1/2 cup sprinkles. I folded them in at the very end and then baked the cakes like any other recipe.

Chocolate Confections

I'm halfway through my last semester of pastry school and this last class taught me a lot about chocolate. I learned about tempering, how to cook sugar, how to mold truffles, and I learned that I have little to no self-control when it comes to candy. Luckily a lot of our production was used to fill an order made by the Governor, so I wasn't taking home EVERYTHING I made (which I totally would have, if I was allowed). Among all of the different candies and chocolates we made, there was one recipe that stood out from all the rest. It was amazing and unbelievably easy! I've already put it on my Christmas baking list because everyone in my office was falling over themselves to get the last piece.

Mini Strawberry Pies

With all this warm weather I have already started making fruity desserts even though it's only the first week in February. I just can't make something pumpkin or chai when it's 65 degrees and sunny out, it just doesn't make any sense! So I went a little crazy with my strawberry purchases last week and I was left with a pint of strawberries and no recipe. I searched the blogosphere and landed on the cutest looking strawberry pies known to man. Of course I didn't have any pie crusts in the fridge so I had to make that, which isn't all that hard, but still. However, I did have a mason jar of lemon curd so I decided to use that to give the dessert a little tartness. I simply spread a little of the lemon curd across the bottom of the pie and then piled on the strawberry filling. It kept the dessert from being overly sweet and turned out perfect.

Strawberry Tall Cake

This weekend I received my monthly issue of Southern Living. I usually browse through it quickly then toss it onto the coffee to remain untouched for about two weeks, until I finally muster up the strength to toss it in the recycling bin. However, this month had a article about the best southern bakeries, this peaked my interest, so I sat down and read about the different bakeries below the Mason-Dixon line.

One cake that I saw looked amazing. It was a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream and piled with strawberries. Now maybe it's because we've been having unusually good whether, or maybe I just needed a break from chocolate (crazy, i know) but I decided immediately that I would make this cake. So I went to the store and picked up some strawberries and started baking.

New York Style Crumb Cake

I was having trouble deciding what I was going to make last night. I had thought about making sticky buns because my grandma had made them over Christmas and they were amazing. But then I started thinking about the time it would take to make a proper yeasted dough and having to scrape the delicious sticky goodness off one of my pans and it quickly got me out of the mood. I still wanted to make something in the breakfast/dessert category, but it needed to be quick. That's when I landed on coffee cake. You can have it in the morning with a cup of coffee and in the evening with a big bowl of ice cream, or at least I can... and will.

Cheesecake Factory Cheescake

Cheesecake is a very interesting dessert. It seems like it would be easy enough, just cream together some cream cheese, sugar, and eggs, right? Not so much. You have to worry about the texture of the filling, the crunch of the crust, the heat in the oven, the jiggle! I've made a couple of cheesecakes and while I've been able to avoid the infamous CRACK I have yet to perfect crust... I put the cheesecake in a water bath (to ensure even cooking), but no mater how much foil I wrap it in, water always seeps in. I'm at a loss. I mean the texture is perfect and the taste is amazing, but the crust doesn't have that crunch that I want. Oh well, maybe I'll just have to forgo the water bath and live with a cracked cheesecake...

Homemade Oreos

I came back to work last week and it was like a ghost town. it was so dead I may have even seen a tumbleweed roll by my desk at one point or that could have been a mirage from me going delirious with boredom. Needless to say there was absolutely NOTHING to do, so I stayed busy by drooling over foodgawker pictures and updating my Pinterest boards. Why didn't I just go home a veg on the couch, you ask? Well, mommy needs a paycheck! So while I eagerly perused the gawkerverse I happened upon a homemade Oreo recipe. I had seen these a couple times before, but also wrote them off. I mean, you can't beat the original and I don't like making cookies... that's right, I said it! For some reason, cookies just don't excite me. SUE ME! Nevertheless, I clicked on the link and decided that I would make them, immediately. Or at least once I got off work at 3.