52 weeks of baking: 50 - chocolate lava cake

Alright people. This recipe. I don't know how I've survived without it. It's insanely easy and ridiculously delicious. It's molten chocolate lava cake. Like you get at restaurants. Except AT HOME and made fresh with quality ingredients, because who knows whats in that nonsense from Chili's and how long it's been around. Here's the recipe, and bookmark that sucker because it is a keeper. I found it months ago but somehow just got around to making it. SHAME.

Like I said, this recipe is EASY. It's a one bowl wonder and it's only downfall is that it makes four little cakes. And that's definitely not a bad thing. If you've got four folks around, perfect, but if you're me and Brendon that leaves you with two extra. And these babies are made to be eaten right out of the oven. Not sure how well they'll keep, but we'retrying it out. Even if they're not as melty and perfect as they were fresh, it's still chocolate cake. It will get eaten. I think next time, and there will be a next time, I'll try halving the recipe.

I mean, is that not heaven? I love cake batter far more than I should, so this little cake was my happy place. Oh, cake batter. I love you so. Don't kill me, raw eggs!

52 weeks of baking: 49 - spice cake

Oh my gosh can you believe it? Only three more weeks of baking and my year of baking will be DONE! As busy as I've been the past month or two, I can't say I'm not a little excited. When life is normal (what is normal and when was that?) it's easy to knock the baking out but dang, I've been so busy it's been hard to squeeze in time in the kitchen.

This week I made a spice cake! For my step mom's birthday last month my dad made a cake and as we were all oohing and aahing over it (I mean, my dad bakes once a year, it's a thing of wonder) and guessing what kind it was, my sister asked if it was a spice cake. It wasn't but that got me thinking about spice cakes. We had them all the time growing up apparently, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what they tasted like. So of course, I had to make one! I used this recipe and it is SO EASY; a one bowl wonder if you rinse it out and use the same bowl for the icing.

Someone LOVES cream cheese icing! I'm a batter fiend, but he's all about that icing.

This cake is very yummy. Spice cake is pretty similar to carrot cake in that it's full of mulling spices and topped with tons of cream cheese icing. The recipe is spot on, although it's a little dry. I may have over cooked it at tad, although I did bake mine in a metal pan versus the glass one the recipe showed. Noted for next time, I'll probably lower the temp a bit. But other than that it's great! I love that it's not a giant cake. It's a sweet little 8"x8" which is perfect for us to knock out in a week.

The final weeks of baking are approaching, and I feel I must be extra picky when choosing items to bake! There are just so many choices! You'd think after almost 52 weeks of baking I'd have run out of ideas, but NOPE! There's just so much yumminess out there.

52 weeks of baking: 47 - cream cheese pound cake

YOU GUYS! My computer died! Blue screened all to hell. My computer was real old and funky, it was only a matter of time. BUT Brendon was trying real hard to make it run faster so the other day he backed up everything on an external hard drive, cleared everything off, and restored the factory settings. And then when it tried to do an automatic update restart, it just died. Not sure if it was the backing up that caused it (Brendon says no, I say YES), but it died. Luckily, we had just backed up everything so all my pictures are safe and sound saved onto our little hard drive, and LUCKILY Brendon has wonderful friends at pharmacy school. A sweetheart computer guru friend of his took my computer home, took it all to pieces, upgraded the RAM, put it back together, and brought it back to life! I'm even running Windows 7 now, y'all! No more Vista! It's like  a brand new computer! Like brand new as in it doesn't have any programs on it except Solitaire and Free Cell. I don't even have Word or Excel on here. And the photo editing capabilities are: MSPaint.

Soooo these photos aren't edited! You probably wont be able to tell a difference because the program I was using to edit photos was like "Microsoft Photo Editor" or something and incredibly lame and incredibly limited. I suck at computers, so whatev. 

ANYWAY, I made a pound cake. I have been thinking about making a pound cake all year and it just never happened, but my mom shared this recipe with me recently and it was so dang easy I just had to try it. It is a freaking winner you guys.

I think pound cakes are traditionally made with a pound of each butter, sugar, eggs, and flour, and this is pretty close, with welcomed addition of cream cheese. It makes SO MUCH BATTER! It is fluffy and heavenly and very tasty. There are six raw eggs in there, and I licked that batter off of the beaters without a second thought. Cake batter and cookie dough for life.

I made this baby in a bundt pan that my momma gave me instead of the suggested tube pan because I don't have a tube pan. Surprising, I know. It worked just fine.

This cake is soooooo good. The consistency is on point. It's thick and fluffy and rich and creamy and smooth and just really perfect. I did not glaze it (GASP) because of laziness. (Tiredness! My life right now you guys. You don't even know.) There is no recipe for a glaze in the recipe I used, but I think 1 cup of sugar and a couple tablespoons of milk would be perfect. This cake would be lovely with a glaze but it is delicious all on it's own.

This pound cake is pretty flawless and would be an excellent starting point for a flavored pound cake. Strawberry cream cheese pound cake? YUM. Get after it!

52 weeks of baking: 36 - flourless chocolate cake

Well, we're back to normal folks. Back to me basically just posting food. But it's dessert, y'all, and dessert is good. I promise I'll do something exciting outside of the kitchen soon. Maybe.

This week's baked adventure was a flourless chocolate espresso cake, from my girl Martha. Because I'm on a chocolate binge (isn't that my whole life?) and this recipe called out to me from an issue of Martha Stewart Living while I was melting into my couch.

Definitely had a Charlie Bucket moment opening up this bar of chocolate. No golden ticket for me however.

Chocolate concrete. I was worried I wouldn't be able to pull my beaters out of this nonsense. It was thick.

This cake is everything you'd expect it to be. Deliciously chocolatey with the perfect hint of espresso. The top has the sweetest little crunch and the inside is soft and fluffy. The recipe calls for a chocolate glaze, but even I felt that it might be TOO much chocolate (also, I am lazy), so I did without. I think freshly whipped cream would be absolutely perfect, and intend on whipping some up for my next slice. It is great by itself, but it definitely needs something... wet. Ha.

Lots of other weeks-o-baking!

52 weeks of baking: 32 - lemon cake with black tea icing

So, I was thinking about lemon cookies. We had some fairly terrible ones at a bakery in Waco a couple weeks back and I haven't stopping thinking about making some decent ones. However, dreams of lemon cookies turned into dreams of lemon cake and this is what happened this week: lemon cake with black tea icing. How amazing is that combination? I cannot take credit for it, the recipe is here from honey & jam. Brilliant idea.

Also, can we talk about this lemon zest infused sugar? SO many possibilities. Sprinkle it all over your life.

Oh, and I tried to make some candied lemon slices... except I didn't tend them very well and they ended up as caramelized lemon slices. Not as good, I promise.

This cake. It's good. It is light and fluffy and perfectly lemony without being punch you in the mouth sweet. And that icing? Mind blown. Adding tea to icing is genius. It tastes like black tea! Not fantastic alone, but with the sweet lemon cake, it is perfect. Green tea icing anyone? And really, following that icing recipe you could add any sort of liquid and flavor your icing accordingly. I love the possibilities! My only complaint is that my icing was a bit too soft and melty, possibly due to the addition of quite hot tea. Perhaps adding it after it was chilled might be better. But I also think if I had just beat it a little longer it would have been the perfect consistency. Now I know.

Although this cake was a bit labor intensive (as zesting lemons always is), it was a lot of fun and a challenge. And I mean black tea icing?? Sheesh, so clever. Clearly I am not over it.

Go on. Make this cake. Your summer needs it. Maybe your winter too.

52 weeks of baking: 31 - chocolate cake #2

First and foremost, happy birthday Harry Potter. Yes, I realize his birthday was yesterday, but there was no blogging for me yesterday. But we definitely celebrated, via this cake. It's chocolate, I feel like he'd like it. Everyone likes chocolate.

And yes, I made another chocolate cake. Whoops. Guess I'll have to eat it. This one is very similar to the last one I made, although it's a layer smaller and made with regular cocoa versus dutch process. It's every so slightly different in taste and texture; this one is fluffier, not as "dark", and the icing is more whipped. But that's about it. Two incredibly similar chocolate cakes. I'm okay with that because they're both delicious. This is the recipe I used this time.

I feel like I need this photo blown up and hung in my kitchen. It's my life. It compliments the painting hanging in my dining room well. One day I'll share that ridiculousness.

This cake is probably easier to make than the one I made last time. Less ingredients and you use just a couple bowls. Like seriously, two. It's an all around winner and I am storing it away in my repertoire as an excellent birthday cake. Or a just-because-cake, because you never need a reason for chocolate cake. Did I mention that it's delicious? And that I just had a piece and am debating going for seconds?

And kudos to the lovely folks at the Riverside CVS who have been eating my baked goods, asking what's coming up next, and sending Brendon home with compliments. THAT is the reason I bake. I love when people enjoy my food. I hope it makes them happy.

I feel like I owe the internet a post on what has actually been happening in my life aside from consuming lots of food, but every time I think about it I'm just like, SHEESH no one wants to hear that droll nonsense. Nothing exciting, just very very very busy. Can you believe it's August? Four months left of the year. Did your brain just explode a little?

52 weeks of baking: 19 - grapefruit yogurt cake

A friend posted a recipe for grapefruit cookies the other day on Facebook and they sounded amazing and I'd been thinking about them since. I was about to finally bake 'em when I thought, what ELSE can I bake with grapefruit? Since I made cookies last week I figured I'd try to do something a little different. And surprise surprise, I consulted my girl Deb and she had a grapefruit yogurt cake that looked amazing.

I love me some grapefruit and I love me some of this cake. It came out perfectly. It's the moistest softest cake ever! And the glaze gives it the nicest subtle crunch. It's got just enough grapefruit flavor and unlike many citrus baked goodies, it's not overwhelmingly sweet. And I think I finally figured out the weirdness with my oven, I lowered the temp 25 degrees and for the first time in a while, my edges didn't get extra crispy! Hurray!

I highly recommend this little cake. And I'm sure you could swap out the fruit for whatever you'd like. I think it would be badass with lime, lemon, or orange. Or a fruit combo!

OH and in the midst of doing some dishes, I turned around to find this:

Cat on the counter. She's such a brat. She has to be in the middle of everything.