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.