Confetti Cake

Or Funfetti.... but that maybe copy-written by the boxed baking Gods. This is a combination of a few recipes I found online. Since I've never in my life made or tasted the boxed version of this. I don't know how it compares. I just know its damn good. I think just the cake without fetti would probably be delicious too.

 Ingredients:

18.5 oz A/P Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt
8 oz Unsalted Butter
13 oz Granulated Sugar
2 oz Light Brown Sugar
12 oz Whole Milk
1 tbsp Vanilla
4 oz Sour Cream
2 ea Eggs
Colored Sprinkles/Jimmies

Preheat your oven to 350F. You can use a stand mixer, handheld or elbow grease, I think they all would work for this. Especially if your doing this with kids, have them burn off some steam with manual labor....

Melt your butter and set aside to cool, if you don't take it too far in the microwave you can use it right away. Sift together the flour baking powder & soda. Whisk together the milk, vanilla and sour cream until its really smooth and has no lumps.

Combine the melted butter, sugars and salt. Mix in the eggs one at a time until thoroughly combined, then add dry and wet mixes alternating between the two until everything is in the pool. Fold in a heavy dose of Sprinkles.

Divide into your baking vessel and bake until a tester comes out clean. Makes 2 dozen or so regular size cupcakes. But I used it for 18 Cupcakes and a 6 inch mini-cake.

BakeOn!

TWD: Nectarine Blueberry Pie

So its hot. Baking is not really the best thing to do right now, but I did it anyways. The pie is in the oven as we speak and I'm outside on the patio while the hubs hoses down the baby moose.

Our puppy loves water like any other dog loves to chase a ball. Its so strange, but who am I to say how he should get his exercise. And on the plus side he stays very clean this way.

So here's a picture of my baking pie and the very wet puppy...waiting for MORE water.

Well here is the result of my efforts. I don't think I baked it long enough because what was once a very thick filling is all runny! Meh... it tasted good anyways and the kid ate two pieces and swears he doesn't like pie.

TWD: Hazelnut Biscotti

Oh Tuesdays how you mock me... I haven't managed to make anything to Tuesdays with Dorie in a long long time....some days I barely know its Tuesday.....you ever notice that when you write Tuesday several times over it starts to look like its miss-spelled?

Anyhoo this week I have a huge wedding I'm prepping for. The cakes themselves arent that large but the couple picked out 3 additional cupcake flavors, 4 brownie flavors and 2 rugelach flavors to feed about 200 guests. Too bad they didn't pick any biscotti then I woulda had this week in the bag!

Hosts for the TWD Party  Jodi from Homemade and Wholesome and Katrina from Baking and Boys

both made beautiful versions of this weeks pick Hazelnut Biscotti. You can go to either site to grab the recipe. :)

Oh wait obligatory puppy photos! We had bring your dog to work day... I lost a lot of sleep wondering how looney this big guy would be and to my surprise he was a prince! I think he's a keeper....

TWD: Hungarian Shortbread

So far in life I have not met a shortbread I didn't like...somehow that buttery salty flavor and the crumbly texture just always hits the spot for me.

I'm not sure what makes this Hungarian tho, the internets have failed to tell me in my feeble attempt at googling it. Maybe its the technique? the Jam? the egg yolks? Meh... who knows, since I skipped the technique and the jam, lets hope its not one of those.


You can grab the recipe from our TWD hosts or on page 327 of the book Baking with Julia

Hey you ever spend the whole weekend watching the last Harry Potter movies followed by a Firefly marathon? Somehow my world seems very tweaked today...like no one is speaking properly.... 

My Baby Moose

Remember this cute little sweet little puppy face?

He's grown at lighting speed.....

To this...

At 21 weeks he was tipping the scales at 45.8 lbs....I'm scared to know how much he's grown since then. Sometimes we come home from work and wonder what happened while we were gone because there's a shocking difference in size. No one ever told us we were adopting a baby moose...

TWD: Orange Loaf Cake

Here I was all excited about lemon loaf cake and I make orange loaf cake instead....so here it is orange loaf.... which doesn't sound as enticing as the lemon, but was good. Just for comparison sake I will make the lemon too just to see which is better... you know for scientific purposes.

I used the juice from the oranges to make a simple syrup to pour over the hot loaf as it cooled so the edges were nice crunchy sticky and a little gooey all at the same time. Yum!

You can grab the recipe from Treats who has a fantastic picture with candied fruit and a beautiful glaze or The Beauty of Life, again awesome picture. I'm jealous... I think I need to seriously hunker down and find some better lighting, and maybe a new camera and photography skillz...........

TWD: Pizza Rustica

Sheeeshhh I completely forgot to post about Pizza! I made mine for Sunday dinner... it was filled with caramelized onions and bacon and whole milk ricotta from scratch! Thank you very much! Ok ricotta from scratch is just dumb... at first glance it seems simple but its time consuming and mine didn't yield all that much. If I had more patience I probably would have had a better outcome but I think that my Pizza Rustica would have tasted exactly the same regardless. In the end it tasted like a quiche with a sweet crust. My honey seemed to like it but I just couldn't get over how wrong it all tasted together...

You can grab the full recipe on pages 430 and 431 or from the bakers over at Capital Region Dining or The Place they Call Home.

Next time Lemon Loaf Cake! Yum!