Our mom is German so it’s no surprise that she loves Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte – Black Forest Cake. As a kid, I never really liked black forest cake because I hated maraschino cherries, and all the store-bought cakes seemed to be covered in them. What’s the point of eating a cake when you don’t like the main […]
baking
The Year in Books: February with Confessions of a French Baker by Peter Mayle
I’ve finished all of Peter Mayle’s novels and non-fiction books, and have turned to Confessions of a French Baker, a little tome on French baking. Co-authored by famous Provençal baker Gerard Auzet, this book is divided into two parts. The first half of the book discusses Mayle’s relationship with the French baker and his observations of the […]
Crème Brûlée
Donatello loves crème brûlée and always orders it whenever it appears on a menu. For his birthday in December, I made individual crème brûlées for him (and the family); and of course, he got the biggest one. After dinner and gifts, I pulled the ramekins of crème brûlée out of the fridge and lit up […]
Vanilla Rum Buttercream Frosting
I used this cooked rum buttercream frosting flavoured with a bit of vanilla to frost the easy one-bowl chocolate cake that I made for my birthday. This recipe makes enough to frost a 9-inch, 2-layer cake. To frost the cake, I filled the two-layer cake and then gave it a crumb coat with about half of […]
Easy One-Bowl Chocolate Cake
This is a classic, plain chocolate cake where all the ingredients are placed in a bowl and beaten together. Unlike other cakes (like the White Chocolate Raspberry Birthday Cake) where you have to combine butter, dry ingredients, milk, and meringue all in a certain order, this is super easy. I made this as my birthday […]