This weekend I made a baby shower cake for a former coworker of mine. She requested a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream, so I’m going to share my go-to white cake recipe with you today. It is a pretty simple recipe, but it’s always moist and delicious! You may notice in the pictures, I made a much larger recipe than this. The recipe below is a good amount for one 9-10 inch cake. I’ve included a link to my favorite buttercream also!
WHITE CAKE
- 1 cup Buttermilk
- 1 cup Oil
- 2 ea Eggs
- 1 tsp Vanilla
- 1 tsp White Vinegar
- 1 1/2 cups Sugar
- 2 1/2 cups Flour
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Baking Soda
I have always looooved pies, but I don’t make them very often. I think part of the reason is that pies are so popular here in Texas, that it is easy to buy one that’s pretty darn good! One dessert that I’ve become a huge fan of since moving here is banana pudding. They even have banana pudding ice cream here! So I decided to turn it into a pie; a combination of banana cream pie and banana pudding. It was a success…I cut a tiny sliver, as my grandmother would have said, and then couldn’t stop eating it. I had to wrap it up and send it with Mikey to work this morning…he sent me a picture of an empty pie pan by 10:00 AM! If you like pies and bananas, I would highly recommend this recipe 🙂 
Biscotti is an Italian biscuit cookie. The name comes from a Latin word meaning “twice-baked.” Biscotti cookies are quite hard and dry, as they are meant to be dipped in a drink. They were originally dipped in Italian dessert wines, but today most people enjoy biscotti with their coffee or tea. I particularly like to coat my biscotti in chocolate and let it melt off into my coffee. Traditionally biscotti is made with almonds, but one thing I love about this cookie is that you can change the flavor quite a bit while using the same basic base recipe. The recipe I am making today incorporates cranberries and pistachios, but you could use orange zest and hazelnuts, or even pumpkin puree and spices to make other flavors. Just try to keep the liquid to dry ratio the same as this recipe. 
This is my go to recipe for anything I need pie dough for. It is very buttery and flaky, so it works well for both sweet and savory dishes. I’ve used it for quiche crusts, pie crust, empanada dough, and homemade pop tart dough. It is a very simple recipe, but I would recommend using a generous amount of flour when working with this dough, due to the amount of butter in the recipe. 
Last week my boyfriend and I started using Blue Apron for our meals. My wonderful parents got it for us while I’m recovering from my food surgery and can’t drive to the grocery store. The meals are way better than I expected and I am enjoying trying all these new recipes, but having these delicious restaurant style dinners is leaving us craving a dessert to finish off our meal. So today after dinner, Mike, our roommate Will, and I realized that we all share a love of cheesecake. After that, I decided what better time to make cheesecake than tonight!? And, BONUS, I have a package of Halloween Oreo’s (impulse purchase) to make a yummy Oreo Cheesecake. 
Handmade chocolate truffles are one of my favorite things to make. They can be made in 
Today I am making red velvet cupcakes with a traditional red velvet frosting, in honor of my brothers 30th birthday! Unfortunately, he isn’t in Texas to enjoy them, but it’s the thought that counts, right? Most people pair red velvet with cream cheese icing these days, but it was originally paired with a boiled milk frosting, that is delicious, and I think, underused! I made this frosting for the first time while I was in college; a coworker of mine told me about it and showed me how his southern mother used to make it and I just loved it. You’ll have to let me know what you think about it! 
Two nights ago my boyfriend, Mike, brought home some garlic bread to have with our dinner. While I was eating it, I just kept thinking about the garlic bread that my mom would make with our dinners when I was younger. The grocery stores around here use large loaves of white bread for their garlic bread, which is good, but my mom always used baguettes from the local bakery, and her’s is sooooo much better! So for today’s post, I thought I would make some baguettes from scratch. My intention was to use one of the baguettes to make garlic bread, but Mike got home from work just as I was taking the baguettes out of the oven…and we may have eaten both baguettes while they were still warm! Oops. It was definitely worth it though… I think this is an appropriate time to use that popular hashtag: #sorrynotsorry. 
I have always loved doughnuts, but there are two places I’ve had doughnuts from that will forever stand out in my mind. When my sister, Hanna, was living in Philadelphia, my family and I went to a restaurant that served Chinese doughnuts with chocolate, cream cheese, and blackberry dipping sauces. My dad, who is not normally a dessert person, fought me over the last doughnut…they were that good! The other doughnut that stands out to me is from a bakery in Boston where I used to work. My other sister, Lucy, loved their jelly filled doughnuts, but they only made them on the weekends and they usually sold out in the first few hours of being open. For today’s post, I’ve decided to do my best to combine these two doughnuts into one delicious doughnut: a blackberry jam filled, sugared, Chinese doughnut. I think they turned out pretty good, but you guys will have to let me know what you think! 