Cake Archives - Baking With Unicorns

TURTLE! nom nom

August 30, 2016 by Baking Unicorn Leave a Comment

Bonjour!
Happy end of August! I don’t know about where you’re at, but apparently the end of August in St Louis is just a scorching, humid mess of a time…. so pretty much like the rest of the summer here. Granted, I cannot hate on the weather too much. I have been hard at work, training in this weather for various races, and I think that training in this weather has prepared me well. I ran in a Spartan Super (8 miles, 25 obstacles) in mid August in the Boston area. Local racers were complaining about the heat, but I felt like it was a beautiful day with little humidity. The race felt like a walk in a park… a walk that had alot of mud, heavy lifting, climbing, and fire, but a walk none the less. This race was SO much fun that I have since signed up for 2 more races, one in Seattle and another in Boston. If I successfully complete those two races, I have the Trifeca- 3 Spartan races, 1 year, 1 of each level (Sprint, Super, and Beast). Here’s hoping I don’t die (and if anyone wants to join me, all you have to do is ask!). My victory pose:

But since it is the end of August, it also means classes have started back up. Thankfully, I’m not really taking any classes. But I will be TA-ing for a neuroscience course. Poor kids. They have no idea how unhelpful I am likely to be with all their questions about action potentials, neuroanatomy, and reflexes. But I’ll do my best, and perhaps just bake them conciliatory cookies for after their exams.

The end of August also means that alot of people in my life have birthdays. Like, and oddly disproportionate amount. Surprisingly, I have managed to not bake at all for any of the birthdays that I have attended, however my friend asked me to help her bake for her friend’s birthday. Clearly, I had no choice but to oblige her. Any excuse to bake!! Plus, I had just been on Pintrest and seen a recipe for a Turtle Cheesecake. Now, I’m not much for Turtle anything, unless it’s the lil reptile sauntering around the dessert or careening through the sea, but it sounded interesting and the Pinterest post made it look pretty (I’m a sucker for shiny things).

I forwarded to recipe to Reshma (the friend in need), having not looked at it at all. She wrote backing asking if she needed to get all the stuff, and at first I thought “F^!@, did I send a really hard recipe?” Luckily, it’s not too difficult of a recipe, and doesn’t actually require you to do too much to make it a “Turtle” cheesecake. Just buy some sauce and some nuts and BAM! insta-turtle! So, the following is the recipe, and how it all went down. All photos of food are courtesy of Miss Reshma herself (and all alcohol imbibed during the baking is courtesy of Mr. Vitaly, Reshma’s manfriend and my teammate for an upcoming Bike MS 100 mile ride)

TURTLE TURTLE TURTLE CHEESECAKE!
graciously snatched from here!

Ingredients:
CRUST
1 1/2 packages of graham crackers (We used regular)
1/3 cup melted butter

FILLING
24oz cream cheese (room temp)
14oz (1 can) sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs
Juice from 1 lemon
1 tbsp vanilla
6oz chocolate chips

TOPPING
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips
1/2 cup caramel ice cream topping
1/2 cup hot fudge ice cream topping
1/4 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 300 degrees and prepare your cheesecake pan (9″ spring form pan is what we used). By “prepare” I mean maybe throw down some parchment paper like we did so that it was easier to slide out of the pan when done.
Crush, mangle and crumble the graham crackers into a semi-fine powder. We had some chunks in ours still. This probably can be done in a food processor, but it’s messier if you do it by hand. Then add in the melted butter and stir it all around. Press the crumbled crackers into the prepared pan, forming the base as well as the wall, ~ 1 1/2 inches up the sides. I think ours was ~ 1/4 inch thick. Once done, place the crust in the fridge to let it cool down and solidify a bit.
Stir cream cheese with condensed milk, sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Try to make it as smooth and creamy as possible. We had a few tiny chunks (pea sized?) in our batter. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Then add in the lemon juice and stir some more!
Melt the chocolate chips (we used milk chocolate, but I would suggest dark or semisweet in the future). Remove 1 cup of the cream cheese batter and add to the melted chocolate (removed from heat). Stir, stir, stir.
Take your cooled crust out of the fridge. Pour about 1/2 the remaining cream cheese batter into the crust. Then add the chocolate batter. Gently, without tearing up the crust underneath, swirl the two batters together (this isn’t necessary, and let’s be honest, no one is looking at the swirl pattern when their stuffing their faces with cheesecake). Then add on the rest of the cream cheese batter. I admit, for this step, we cut it pretty damn close. Our crust was barely high enough to contain the batter.
Gently place the pan into your preheated oven and bake for 75-90 minutes. We took about 93 minutes. Because we were still enjoying Vitaly’s beverages, once the cake was finished, we turned the oven off, but left the cake in the oven to cook a lil bit more.
Next, Reshma took the cake home because it was for the next day and I have no idea what she did with it after, but here’s what I suspect happened:
Place cake in fridge until you’re ready to serve. Take it out. Drizzle chocolate sauce on the cake. Drizzle caramel sauce on the cake. Sprinkle chocolate chips and pecans on cake. Take cake to party, remove from pan. Let birthday boy eat a large portion and share the rest with everyone else at the party. WOOT!

P.S. MUSIC! How could I forget until the end to add in my musical joys of the current moment? Near epic fail on my part. But here’s what I’m jamming to these days;

Hold Each Other- by A Great Big World
Adorable! ugh!

Bombshell- by Ashley Monroe
I love her voice. Love it. And I like the video interpretation.

Happy Autumn

November 2, 2015 by Baking Unicorn Leave a Comment

Happy Autumn, Everyone!!!

It’s my favorite time of year. Leaves are changing to beautiful reds, yellows, and oranges, and the temperature sits at a comfortable hoodie level. I also love the sound of leaves crunching under my boots as I make my way to school. And biking is perfect because you don’t show up at your destination looking like a sweaty mess (not that that has ever stopped me).

This autumn has been filled with classes, brains, and yoga. I’m actually enjoying my classes for the most part. Turns out when you kinda understand what’s going on, the material isn’t so bad. Who knew? The brains are coming along, one voxel at a time. And the yoga is great right now. I’m having a blast leading my boot camp at the yoga studio, and then teaching a heated vinyasa class as well as a slow flow class. All the students are so much fun. Even though they glare at me as I make them hold a plank for balance on one leg for too long, I know they are glaring with love. *gulp*
All this teaching also means I’m constantly surfing around for new music. My latest find is this:

What can I say? I’m a sucker for some Kelly Clarkson. And I’m a sucker for a duet. The song has a single verse that gets repeated the entire song, but it’s catchy and I find myself rocking out to it far more than I would like to admit… (maybe it’s playing right now… maybe…)

Quickly back to yoga: I taught my boot camp on Halloween, so clearly I needed to dress up. Sadly, I’m fresh out of drill sergeant costumes, but I did have my “sexy cop” outfit from my Jeerleading days. So pulled that out of the closet and had some fun getting my students ready for the zombie apocalypse by having them do many burpees and lunge kicks. (if you can’t tell, I’m posing with Jane Fonda). Needless to say, my students were ready to take on the hoards of creatures roaming St Louis streets last night. (and yes, I was one of the creatures roaming around the central west end… guess what I was!)

Autumn also means delicious comfort foods like pumpkin pie, warm apple cider, and roasted root veggies. Delicious! But, this post’s recipe has none of those. Nope. This recipe was chosen because of a memory of when I baked mini cupcakes for my brother’s Latin class during their midterm exam. Sadly, I have NO idea what I baked for that class. I just have a vague memory of it being spicy and may have had carrots or apples in the mix… Anyway, I wanted to try to make a spice cupcake again, so I did! And because pinterest has been showing me lots of caramel frosting recipes, clearly the spice cupcake needed caramel frosting. I didn’t know how the combo would work out, but I think it turned out pretty deliciously. At least, people said they were good. Then again, they may have been biased cuz they know me and I was standing right there when they ate it… whatever!

Autumn Spice Cupcake with Caramel Frosting
cupcake recipe from this
frosting recipe from this

Cupcake Ingredients:
1/4 cup of butter (half a stick)
1 cup of sugar
2 eggs
1 1/3 cup of flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt (or two)
1/2 cup of milk
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon fresh ginger (grated)
2 teaspoon vanilla

Frosting Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
~2 cups powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare a 12 cup cupcake pan with cupcake papers or whatever you like to use for your cupcakes.
Combine sugar and butter in a bowl and mix until it resembles course crumbs. Then add in the two eggs and beat to your hearts delight.
In a separate small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and dry spices. Then add half of the flour mixture to butter mixture. Add in fresh ginger, vanilla, and milk. Combine loosely and then add in rest of the flour mixture. Stir until completely mixed together.
Divide batter into prepared cupcake pan and bake for 16 minutes (or until toothpick comes out clean). Let cool while you prepare the frosting.
For the frosting, melt butter in saucepan. Add in brown sugar and bring to a soft boil, stirring constantly to prevent burning. Then add in the milk and bring back to soft boil for ~2 minutes, still stirring constantly. The sauce should still be fairly runny. Let cool for 30 minutes.
Once butter/brown sugar has cooled, add in 1 cup of confectioner sugar and combine completely. Then add in some more until desired frosting consistency is achieved. I did a total of 2 cups, but wish I had only done 1 1/2 – 1 3/4 cups. My frosting, as you can see, was rather thick and crumbly. Still tasty but more of a fudge in the end.
Frost those cupcakes with as much frosting as you want! I had extra that’s currently in my fridge still…. not sure what I’ll be doing with it…
EATALLOFTHEMBEFOREANYONEELSECAN!

Back To Basics

September 7, 2015 by Baking Unicorn Leave a Comment

It has been a whole summer since my last post. And it seems like every post in the past year or so has echoed the idea that I am going to increase my posting rate. This post is probably not much different, however instead of trying to do better, I think I have to just commit to rolling with the punches and posting when I can.

And that commitment actually drives the title of this post. Getting back to aspects of life that get lost when one is like me and runs through the days like there is something chasing him. This summer has been a whirlwind of travel, parties, work, and fun, but now that it’s over and classes have started again, I’ve had the opportunity to pause and reflect on the good, the bad, and the ugly. To highlight a few things:

My lab work over the summer was rather awesome. Though I still do not have any results to show as of now, I learned a lot. In addition to the learning, I actually kinda liked having regular hours when I was expected(ish) to be at the lab. Yes, those hours were flexible and I took full advantage of that, but I appreciated not taking work home and juggling it with classes, meetings, and fun.
Teaching yoga and boot camps this summer has been so much fun! Even though teaching responsibilities cause me to take advantage of flexible hours, I’m reminded that I really do love leading fitness classes. Being able to positively affect someone’s day with a simple hour of class is a great feeling that I’m in no hurry to give up!
Outdoors! Outdoors! Outdoors! I’ve had the opportunity to go camping, hiking, biking, and racing this summer. I’ve loved it. Just being outside in the forests and mountains has reminded me that there is so much life to appreciate outside the city, and one should take full advantage of it whenever possible.

While I would not change any of this summer’s events, I realize that my favorite moments were when I stopped and took a breath. They were the times when I didn’t let the rest of life take up parts of my mind while engaged in another activity. Though I have no intentions of slowing down my everyday life, I intend to try to keep things more simple. More basic. Maybe that will be making dinner at home rather than going out. Or maybe that will mean finding a better balance between work, school, and fun. Maybe it just means I turn off my phone for a couple of hours. Who know? All I know is that I’m looking forward to it!

Now, perhaps it is just me, but whenever I hear the words “back to basics” of course I think of Christina Aguilera’s album. Here’s the intro to that album:

But since that song is a bit old, here’s a song off of Leona Lewis’ latest album that I’ve been dancin’ around to lately. It’s called “I am.” (yes, I realize I posted a Leona song last time… I’m okay with this)

Keeping with the theme of this post, I decided I would go back to the first recipe I remember learning. It’s my mom’s brownie recipe that I remember baking when I was probably 7? 8? Somewhere in there. My strongest memory attached to this recipe is that she gave it to me to bake, but made it into a lil math problem, telling me to make only an eighth of the recipe and then bake it in the toaster oven. Whether her intention was to teach me math or to get herself a fresh brownie is unclear. Regardless, it achieved both purposes and also taught me that I love baking! (I also remember trying to divide an egg in half and failing. We decided the whole egg was okay)

BROWNIES!!!
from my mom’s recipe book

Ingredients
4oz Unsweetened Chocolate (I’ve always used Baker’s)
1/2 cup (1 stick) Butter
2 cups Sugar
4 Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 cup Flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9×13 pan or line pan with parchment paper.
Place chocolate and butter in double boiler and place over medium heat. While chocolate and butter melt (stir every few minutes), mix eggs, sugar, and vanilla in a medium bowl with whisk.
Once chocolate and butter are completely melted, remove from heat and let sit for a minute or two. Then pour chocolate into egg mixture and stir a few times. No need to completely mix in the chocolate yet. Next, add the flour and mix, completely incorporating flour while avoiding over beating batter.
Pour batter into prepared pan, spreading out towards corners as needed, and bake for 23-25 minutes. Check brownies with toothpick. I personally like the brownies to be a bit more dense, so my toothpick will have a bit of brownie on it when removed.
Serve hot or cold. Or don’t serve them. Just eat them all.

Lemons Make Me Happy :-D

October 11, 2014 by Baking Unicorn 1 Comment

Well, clearly my posting streak died. Damn you school!

But hopefully this post signifies the start of a more regular posting regiment… though considering how I failed to know about several exams and meeting that were on some calender somewhere, I say this with a grain of salt… or a block of salt.

This song/video I was planning on posting as my new favorite… about a month and a half ago. I still love it (clearly as I’m sharing it here), but it’s rather sad that it’s been that long since my last post. wah wah.

I actually love all of Miranda’s new CD, Platinum. Of note, the title track, Platinum, and Gravity is a B**ch.

So why do lemons make me happy? Because they do… specifically in yogurt form.
I’m currently training for a half marathon. It’s in 1 week! YIPES! Went for a 13.1 mile run (aka, a half marathon) last week and then spent the rest of the day limping around Grove Fest with friends. OOOPS! Apparently my body decided to be angry. But why is this of any importance to baking? Really, it’s only because the half marathon sent out a sponsor email with a coupon for Noosa Yohgurt, which has become my new favorite food thanks to my friend Caroline (damn her for getting me addicted). Anyway, I decided baking with said yohgurt should happen. Since lemon is me favorite, a natural progression was lemon pound cake, right? Right. After a bit of googling around for a recipe, I found Ina Garten’s recipe. Since it’s just me in my place, I decided to half the recipe and made only one cake (reflected below). As you’ll see in the pictures, my cake decided to sink in the middle rather than rise… I’m not certain if this is because I didn’t add enough baking soda (or powder?) cuz I definitely did not measure them out properly, or whether I beat the batter too much (or too little)… but regardless, my cake middle is concave rather than convex. Meh! Still tastes good!

Lemon Pound Cake
Inspired by this

Ingredients
Cake:
1 stick Butter
1 cup Sugar
2 Eggs
zest of 3 Lemons
1 1/2 cups Flour
1/4 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/4 teaspoon Baking Powder
salt
3 oz Noosa Yohgurt (lemon!)
2 tablespoons Fresh Lemon Juice
1/2 teaspoon Vanilla
Syrup/Glaze:
1/4 cup Sugar
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons Fresh Lemon Juice
1 cup confectioners Sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour an 8 1/2 X 4 1/2 X 2 1/2 inch loaf pan.

2. Cream butter and sugar together in mixing bowl. Add lemon zest and eggs to butter mixture and beat until completely combined. Set aside. In a separate bowl, combine baking soda, baking powder, salt and flour. Set this aside too! In a small bowl, combine Noosa Yohgurt, vanilla and lemon juice together, mixing completely. Then add half the flour to the butter mixture. Mix until incorporated, then add all of the yoghurt mixture. Stir yoghurt mixture in and then finish by adding the second part of the flour mixture. Mix completely.

3. Transfer batter to prepared pan and bake for 50-60 minutes (toothpick should come out clean!). Remove from oven (unless you want it EXTRA crispy) and allow to cool for ~10 minutes. While the cake cools, place 1/4 cup sugar and 1/4 cup of lemon juice in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Allow sugar to dissolve completely. I personally wanted a slightly thicker syrup, so I allowed some of the liquid to boil off.

4. Use a spatula to loosen sides of cake from pan and turn onto wire rack. Take a fork to the top of the cake and prick small holes in the top. Pour prepared syrup on top of cake, allowing it to spill over sides and soak into the top via the pricked holes. Allow cake to cool fully (~45-60 minutes?). When cake is cooled, combine confectioner’s sugar and 1 tablespoon lemon juice in a small bowl. Continue to add lemon juice to glaze until desired consistency is obtained. Then drizzle the glaze over the cooled cake, again letting excess drip down the sides.

5. nom nom 😀

WAIT!!!!
So I started writing this post a week ago. Since then I’ve discovered a new song that has been on repeat all night. I would save it for the next post, but I’m faaaaaaar toooo excited to wait that long (cuz who knows when that will be?!). This is You + Me, a teaming up of Alecia Moore (aka, PINK!) and Dallas Green. So excited for this album!

Farmers’ Market Find: pt 1

August 10, 2014 by Baking Unicorn 1 Comment

Well, it seems that when I don’t have a job or work to do (other than cleaning and organizing) I have time to post things. 3 posts in a week? Unprecedented. But, cuz I know that life will pick up in the next week, I figure, may as well milk this posting time for all I can.

First, I would like to share this video. I saw it a couple months ago, but as my posting has been nil in the past few months, I haven’t had the chance to share it till now. Yanis, Arnaud, and Mehdi are phenomenal, and I love watching them dance! They are the reason I did a performance with the GGRD Jeerleaders in heels. The three kill it in this performance. Whenever I need a pick me up, I just watch this:

Now, because of all this free time, today I had the opportunity to bike to the farmers’ market in Tower Grove Park. I was too late to go to the free yoga class (went there last week with my friends Beth and Jack), but was just in time to hit the post yoga rush. After what seemed like an oddly long coffee line wait for a line of 5 people, with coffee in hand, I enjoyed a stroll around the whole market, scanning all the stands for the best produce. Most stands had heirloom tomatoes, so of course I had to get some. But what to do with just a tomato? Naturally, basil and bread were the next buys. Along with those, I found some small, sweet plums. Mine! My plan was to just eat the plums and make bruschetta with the other ingredients.

But once I got home, that plan dissolved. I found I had 6 plums plus 2 more that I had from the other day at Whole Foods. So many plums! Clearly baking was the only option. Because I had the basil, and I know that I NEVER finish all the basil in whatever dish I bought it for, I decided plum and basil should come together in a cake. And so that’s what happened here! This recipe is a modification of a cake I had in San Francisco several years ago. The baker actually has her own blog, The Moon in My Kitchen. She’s wonderful! This particular recipe is based on this post. The couple pictured in the post are my friends in San Francisco, and I was actually at the dinner where those pics were taken. Since that dinner, I’ve made this recipe in various forms. It’s delicious! And easy to play with.

With this particular iteration, I had leftover ingredients. I cut a few too many plums and made too much of the candied walnuts. So those became a salad with arugula, heirloom tomato, and fresh parmigiano-reggiano cheese. Nummy! (the ingredient amounts below are what I should have used. oops!)

Plum-Basil Cake
inspired by the link above!

ingredients:
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
8 1/2 tablespoons butter
2/3 cup +1 tablespoon sugar
zest from 1 orange
2 eggs
6 oz yogurt (I used vanilla Greek yogurt)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 oz chopped walnuts
~4 plums
~3 sprigs (?) Basil

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and line a 9″ round pan with parchment paper.

2. Toss chopped walnuts, 1/2 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon sugar into a frying pan and place on medium heat. Allow butter to fully melt. Stir constantly until sugar and butter begin to caramelize and walnuts begin to toast. Remove from heat and set aside.

3. If you have small plums, then I would quarter them. If you have medium/large plums, I would cut them into eighths. Just depends on how thick you want your plum slices. Ultimately you will want 16+ slices. I cut up 6 plums. Quartered 4 and the other 2 into eighths. Hence why I had too many plum slices and the need to make a salad. As for the basil, remove leaves from stem and discard stem (unless you want it for something). Coarsely chop basil and toss plums and basil together in a medium bowl.

4. Sift flour, baking soda, and baking powder together in a small bowl. Set aside. Cream butter (remaining 8 tablespoons) and sugar (remaining 2/3 cup) together in a medium bowl. Add in 1 egg at a time, beating thoroughly after each egg. Toss in the orange zest, vanilla extract, and yogurt. Whip that all together. Add in the flour mixture and mix until just combined. Try not to beat it too much as it can make the batter a bit dense.

5. Spoon 1/2 of the batter into the prepared pan and spread it out. Then place plums with basil in whatever arrangement you want on top. Cover with remaining batter and spread this addition out. Place remaining plums and basil on top. Finally, sprinkle candied walnuts over everything. Bake for 55-60 minutes or until tester comes out clean from the center. I added extra plums to the center of my cake. This slowed the baking in the center, so it took a bit longer than 60 minutes in my oven. Play it by ear… or some such phrase.

6. Remove cake from oven and allow to cool for ~30 minutes on wire rack. Then, if you can, lift cake out using the parchment paper edges. Or turn it out. Whatever works for you. Then eat it all. All. 😀