Poppy Seed Cake.

Recipe 31.

Poppy Seed Cake (from Taste of Home). 

Ingredients:

1/3 cup poppy seeds

1 cup 2% milk

4 egg whites

3/4 cup shortening

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

Cream Cheese Frosting:

8 oz Philadelphia Cream Cheese, softened

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups confectioners' sugar

Prep: Soak the poppy seeds in milk for 30 minutes. Place egg whites in a large bowl and let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Cream shortening and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla. Combine flour and baking powder, then add into mix alternately with poppy seed mixture, beating well after each addition. Beat egg whites until soft peaks form; fold into batter.

Pour into a greased 9x13. Bake at 375 for 25-30 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

For frosting, beat the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla until smooth, and then gradually beat in confectioners' sugar. Spread over cake. Store in refrigerator. 

Orange Yogurt Loaf Cake.

Recipe 31.

Orange Yogurt Loaf Cake (from Sprinkle Bakes).

This loaf cake was so fun to make.  Zesting oranges, making glaze, quick and easy. What else could you ask for? Well, I guess I'd ask for more cake, but I have a relentless sweet tooth.

Glaze instructions are ridiculously easy. I don't understand why so many times my glazes are too runny or too thick or too not-delicious. But this is the first time I got glaze perfectly right!!! I was so excited that I think I made two or three batches of glaze just to prove that it actually happened! So, it happened. Breanna is a glaze maker. She didn't mess it up. Be proud.

Ingredients:
Cake:
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup yogurt (I used plain greek yogurt)
3 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
zest of 2 large oranges (about 2 tbsp)
1/2 cup oil (I used extra light olive oil)

Glaze:
1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1 cup powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a loaf pan and set aside

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. In a large bowl, whisk together yogurt, sugar, eggs, orange zest, vanilla, and oil. Gradually whisk in dry ingredients until well blended. Transfer batter to prepared loaf pan. Bake for about 50 minutes (or until tester comes out clean). Let the cake cool slightly, remove it from the loaf pan and then immediately return it to the pan. This helps is not stick but keep its shape.

In a medium bowl, whisk together orange juice and powdered sugar. Pour over the loaf cake and let stand until the glaze soaks into the cake. Slice and serve!

This recipe is a keeper! Definitely going into my favorites list.

America Cake.

Recipe 28.

America Cake (from Ina Garten).

Contessa calls it flag cake if you want to look it up. 

I call it America Cake.

Want to know why? Even if you don't, I'm telling you. I call it America Cake because it's delicious and perfect and amazing and awesome and I had three pieces and didn't even feel bad about it. In America you can have your cake and eat it too.

This is going at the top of my list with that really good focaccia bread I made once. Yes, I'm keeping tabs on my favorites. Yes, I'll be making my favorites for the rest of my life.

Make. This. Cake. Before. You. Die.

Ingredients:

2 1/4 sticks unsalted butter at room temp

3 cups sugar

6 eggs at room temp

1 cup sour cream at room temp

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

3 cups flour

1/3 cup cornstarch

1 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp baking soda

Icing Ingredients:

4 sticks unsalted butter at room temp

1 1/2 pounds cream cheese at room temp

1 pound confectioners' sugar

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Toppings:

Lots of strawberries and blueberries

Are you excited yet?? 

If you aren't go back and read through how much butter and cream cheese you'll be using.

If you aren't excited now, you need to run to the doctor to get your vitals checked.

Heat oven to 350. Grease and flour an 18 x 13 x 1 1/2-inch sheet pan.

Cream the butter and sugar in your electric mixer, on high, until light and fluffy. With your stand mixer on medium speed, add eggs, sour cream, and vanilla. Stir until smooth.

Sift together flour, cornstarch, salt, and baking soda. With the mixer on low speed, add this dry mixture to the butter mixture until just combined. Pour into pan, smooth the top, and baking for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool to room temperature!!

For the icing, combine the butter, cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla with an electric mixer, just until smooth. Spread across cooled sheet cake. Create the field of stars with blueberries. Cut strawberries (or use raspberries) for the stripes.

Cut the cake into pieces, open your apartment window, post a picture on a social networking site, and watch it disappear in twenty minutes. Flag day was a month ago and people are still talking about it!

Banana Split Cupcakes.

Recipe 17.

Banana Split Cupcakes (from Heat Oven to 350, again).

If maraschino cherries aren't your thing, you may want to rethink these. But if you love them, this is the cupcake for you! I'm impartial to them, really. But it was so fun to make a dessert within a dessert!

Ingredients:
1 yellow cake mix (box or homemade)
1 cup water
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
3 eggs
1 cup chopped drained maraschino cherries
1 cup miniature semi-sweet chocolate chips, divided
1 1/2 cups prepared vanilla frosting
1 cup marshmallow creme
30 whole maraschino cherries, drained and patted dry

Heat oven to 350 and line your cupcake pans with liners! Save 2 tablespoons of your cake mix for later, and combine the cake mix, water, bananas, and eggs in a large bowl. Beat until moistened, and then beat at a medium speed for 2 more minutes.

Chop up a cup of the cherries. This part is messy but fun! Combine the cherries with the 2 tablespoons of cake mix, and add them to the mixture, along with the chocolate chips.

Pour the batter into the liners and bake for 15-20 minutes. Cool, as in let them become room temperature. But they also are really cool.

Combine the frosting and marshmallow creme in a bowl until well blended to make the marshmallow frosting. Annndddd put a cherry on top!

Blueberry Cream Cookies.

Recipe 16.

Blueberry Cream Cookies (from Heat Oven to 350)
These aren't your average cookies. And it's a lot harder to find dried blueberries in April than you'd think.  My 3rd grocery store was a charm.  Anyway, when I described to a non-baker that these were "summer cookies," they looked at me as if there was no such thing as a cookie for a specific time of year. Come on people! Christmas time has its own cookies; why can't summer?


They are thin, crisp, and less sugary, buttery, and oily than any triple-chocolate-hand-dipped-add-some-whip-cream-cookies. But don't get me wrong, they are still fantastic. People kept coming back for more, and when my last one was eaten, a little piece of me died.


They are the perfect mix of fruit and sugar and beauty. They take a little longer than your average cookie, but thats because they are waaayyyy above average.

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1/4 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup plus 2 tbs granulated sugar

1/2 cup plus 2 tbs light brown sugar

1/4 cup corn syrup

1 large egg

1 cup dried blueberries

1 recipe Milk Crumbs (see below)

Milk Crumbs:

1/4 cup plus 1 T nonfat dry milk powder

2 T all-purpose flour

1 T cornstarch

1 1/2 tsp sugar

1/8 tsp salt

1 1/2 T unsalted butter, melted

1/4 cup white chocolate, melted

To make the milk crumbs, heat up the oven to 225. In a medium bowl, whisk together 2 tbs and 1 1/2 tsp of milk powder, the flour, cornstarch, sugar and salt. Stir in melted butter until well combined. Spread mixture on baking sheet and bake until dried and crumbly, 8 to 10 minutes. Let cool. They will look 
almost exactly the same. Surprise:

Transfer milk crumbs to a large bowl and mix in remaining 2 tbsp plus 1 1/2 tsp milk powder and white chocolate. Set aside.


For the cookies: Preheat oven to 375. Sift dry ingredients together (flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt). Set aside and cream together butter, sugars, and corn syrup until combined.  Add your eggs and mix again. 

Pour in the dry mixture a little bit at a time and mix in until you get cookie dough! Mix in the milk crumbs and dried blueberries until just mixed. Shape dough into balls and place onto baking sheets.

Bake at 375 until cookies are golden brown and tops begin to crack. It took mine about 11 minutes, and I made about 3 dozen cookies.

I obviously couldn't decide which pictures to use. They were just too pretty!!

Banana Cream Pie

Recipe 11.

Banana Creme Pie
(from allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

one baked pie crust (I just bought frozen pie dough, pie crust is for another day)

3/4 cup white sugar

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

2 cups milk

3 egg yolks, beaten

2 tablespoons butter

1 1/4 tsp vanilla

4 sliced bananas

Combine sugar, flour, and salt in a saucepan.  Add in milk while stirring, and then pump up the heat! Actually, only cook at a medium heat until it becomes bubbly, and then stir and cook for about 2 more minutes. Stir in a part of the hot mixture with the beaten yolks, and then add it all right back in. Cook for two more minutes, and then add butter and vanilla.  Stir until it is all smooth and pudding-like.

Some like to mix the banana pieces in with the pudding, but I decided to layer mine across the bottom of the crust, and poured the mixture on top. Save some banana slices for later!

Bake at 350 for 12-15 minutes.  Chill in the fridge for about an hour. Then, if you are awesome like me, you'll put a whole 5" layer of cool whip on top. Ok, 5" was an exaggeration, but if you do that, please take a picture and become my hero.

Make sure you have 6 or 7 of your favorite people on hand, because it will be gone in 15 minutes flat. No joke. This was probably THE best banana pie I've ever had.

Lemon Drop Cookies

Recipe 5.

Lemon Drop Cookies
(from Tasty Kitchen)

My mom sent me this recipe yesterday afternoon and I went straight to work on them! They sounded and looked so fun!

3 cups of flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/3 cup sugar
1 whole lemon (zested)
1 cup butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 tsp lemon extract
4 oz. Lemon Drop or Lemon Head candies (crushed)

Glaze:
3 tbsp lemon juice (from the lemon)
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar

My two new skills: crushing hard candy in the most annoying way possible, and zesting a lemon!
And before we get started, behold my new mixing bowls from the most heavenly place on Earth:

In a beautiful medium bowl, mix flour, baking soda, and salt.  In a separate beautiful bowl, add sugar and lemon zest. Use your fingers to rub together until it is well blended and fragrant.  Add softened butter and cream together.  Blend in eggs, vanilla, and lemon extract. Mix in crushed lemon drop candies.  Add flour mixture and stir until mixed in.

Drop 1 inch balls onto a greased cookie sheet. Flatten balls slightly with your hand. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes until slightly browned. While your cookies are cooling, press your thumb into the middles of them to make an indentation so the glaze will stay on top better. You can thank my beautiful roommate Kendra for that tip.

The glaze is simply the lemon juice and powdered sugar mixed together. Once the cookies are cool, spoon glaze on top. The glaze takes a while to set before the cookies are transportable.

Fresh Apple Cake (with sauce)

Recipe 3.

Fresh Apple Cake
(from the ladies at The Sisters Cafe)

4 cups peeled, diced apples (I used four small galas)
2 cups sugar
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
3/4 cup canola oil (I used vegetable oil, no biggie)
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans (I used walnuts instead, loved it)

Preheat oven to 350. In a large bowl, stir together apples and sugar.  Add dry ingredients and stir well.  In a separate bowl, beat eggs, oil and vanilla. Stir egg mixture into apple mixture, blending until thoroughly moistened. Stir in pecans (or walnuts) Pour into greased 9x13, and bake for 50 minutes or until cake springs back when lightly pressed. Serve with warm cream sauce.

Cream Sauce
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup butter
1 tsp vanilla

Place all ingredients in saucepan and stir.  Bring to a boil and cook on medium-high for a few minutes.  Drizzle over pieces of apple cake and serve warm!

 Bon appetit! This cake was delicious and beautiful.  I left my cake in the oven when I ran to pick up a friend (don't worry, I left a roommate home so I wasn't worried about burning down the apartment complex), but I overcooked it just a tad.  But this cake is indestructible! Even a little browned, it was DELICIOUS! Suggestion: Make this when you plan on serving the whole thing to everyone that day.  It was still good three days later, but nothing beats a FRESH apple cake.


Be careful where you leave your camera while you bake, or you'll upload little surprises like this: