Oreo Olallieberry Chocolate Layer Cake, or "Oo-- cake!"

I'm working on developing an Easter recipe for y'alls right now, but it isn't quite up to snuff yet, so in the meantime, here's the cake that I made for my roommate's birthday party this past weekend, at which our epic and famous pie made an encore appearance.  Maria has been after me for quite some time now to use up the fat bag of olallieberries I have stashed in the freezer to free up freezer space, so I decided to make her an oreo olallieberry chocolate layer cake for her birthday -- oreos because they're nostalgic, and birthday cakes should be nostalgic; olallieberries because then our freezer space increases and because they're delicious, especially when combined with dark chocolate; and chocolate because... wait, do I really need to explain myself with that one?

The cake itself is fluffy black chocolate cake layered with cocoa-olallieberry Italian meringue buttercream, studded with oreo cookie chunks, and covered in drippy dark chocolate ganache. Between the tartness of the berries and the dark cocoa, the cake is only moderately sweet, just the way I like it: dark, not cloyingly saccharine, with a moody attitude.  Oh, and gold flecks on top just for a bit of diva power.  What the heck, right?--I was making a layer cake already.  Might as well go all out!

With the bit of buttercream and cake that I had left over after I finished making the actual cake itself, here's what I did: cake shots!  Layers of cake and buttercream, topped off with sprinkles, in a convenient shot glass.  The perfect amount of single-serving, I'm-craving-cake-in-the-middle-of-the-night delicious-ness.  Forget cake pops, which require painstaking shaping, freezing, and dipping.  I'll take a cake shot (or two, or three), please!  :-)

Now back to the kitchen to work out this Easter recipe!


Read on for recipe....

Basil, Hazelnut, and Chocolate Cakelettes, and Meet My Blog-doptees!

I'm back!  Ha, has November been a crazy month or what?!  Thank you all for your questions on the "Ask Away" post last week--I'll start answering them coming up later this week, so you still have a little bit more time to submit your questions.

But this post isn't about me.  Nope.  This post is about something far more awesome: my Adopt-A-Blogger mentees: Ari and Anita from Braised Anatomy.  It's exciting for me to have officially "graduated" into mentorshiphood, though I have to say, it took a bit of a push out of the nest (so to speak) from my own mentor, Kristen of Dine and Dish and founder of the Adopt-a-Blogger program.  One day, shortly after meeting Kristen at BlogHerFood, she twittered (tweeted? twat? twhat?) me saying that she had the perfect blog adoptees for me, and after seeing Braised Anatomy, there was no way I could say "no."  Ari and Anita are med students (like, studying to be proper doctors who can actually save lives, unlike my pretty useless little Ph.D.!), and their blog is just so downright hilarious.  They have such a great sense of humor in their writings and musings about food that their posts always bring a huge smile to my face when I see them pop up in my reader feed.

My first memory of their blog was this post on basil syrup and homemade basil soda that happened to be on the front page the first time I visited their site.  I'm such a huge fan of herbs in sweets that the idea of sweet basil has been stuck in my head ever since.  So, I decided to make a dessert to accompany their basil soda--something that I'd serve Ari and Anita if we weren't on opposite sides of the country, something that we could sink our forks into while sipping bottles of basil soda through striped green straws, sitting on the porch, laughing over nerdy jokes and commiserating about student life.  That something: hazelnut and chocolate cakelettes with basil buttercream.

These cakelettes feature a thick layer of dense, flourless dark chocolate cake topped with a layer of hazelnut and dark chocolate meringue, baked right on top of the cake.  The roughly-chopped chocolate folded into the meringue develops into these veins of dark chocolate running through the cracks of the hazelnut and meringue.  But really, the unifying element to these cakelettes is the basil buttercream.  The fragrant sweetness of the basil balances out the darkness of the chocolate beautifully, and the herbal earthiness blends with the nutty hazelnut flavor seemlessly.  (It's like dessert pesto!)  The basil is a surprising and pleasantly unexpected flavor, and, unlike your traditional mint, it actually doesn't overpower and completely take over the dessert.

So before the recipe, make sure you go and check out Braised Anatomy, Ari and Anita's blog, and support my adoptees by saying "hello!"


Read on for recipe...

Midweek Macarons: Cinnamon Apple Macarons with Apple Butter Buttercream and Tart Green Apples

This season, I've been a tad bit obsessed with apples. (and pears.)  Trust me: I've been resisting the strong urge to have every post on this blog be about apples.  I don't know--does anyone else go through phases like this with fruit and ingredient obsessions?  Or am I just particularly weird?

These macarons are my love affair with apples encapsulated in a tiny two-bite form.  It's as if you take everything amazing about an apple and squeeze and compress it--with great, magical pressure--into a single macaron.  The shells are cinnamon-spiced and sweet, brittle on the outside with just enough chewy bite on the inside.  The buttercream is packed with the essence of apple flavor from the intense homemade apple butter mixed in--an apple butter that sat stewing and bubbling on the stove over low heat for two hours, caramelizing with the brown sugar and soaking up clove and cinnamon fragrances.  And, at the heart of the macaron: an extra, extra tart crunch from chunks of crisp, fresh green apples lightly tossed in sour lemon juice and woodsy ground cinnamon.  I barely shared any of these with anyone else, being so busy gobbling them up myself.

Have you entered the Breast Cancer Awareness giveaway yet?  You have until this Sunday!

Also, a special shout-out to desserts for breakfast readers Laura Lee and Zizikalandjai. They let it slip in previous comments that their birthdays are coming up this weekend, so consider these macarons my little birthday treat to you two. :-)

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!


[Want more Midweek Macarons? --> Strawberry + Red wine + Mascarpone Cream]


Read on for recipe...

A Raspberry and Lemon-Lime Birthday: Raspberry Lemon Lime Sparkling Punch and Layer Cake

Growing up, having a summertime birthday was the saddest thing in the world because while you celebrated all of your friends' birthdays during the school year, no one was around to celebrate yours!  (and the sorriest part for me was that you couldn't bring cupcakes for your class to enjoy!)  But, since then, I've begun to embrace having a summertime birthday, namely because you're almost always guaranteed lovely weather (well, that is, unless you have June Gloom as we do here in the Bay), childhood friends are in the area visiting for the summertime, and some of my favorite flavors, flowers, vegetables, and fruits are in season, making this one foodie particularly happy.

This year for my birthday cake, I decided to take inspiration from one of my favorite childhood treats which also happens to take advantage of the fresh berries and gorgeous citruses overflowing at the farmers' markets recently: raspberry and lemon-lime sparkling punch.  This particular drink comes from my childhood piano teacher.  She used to mix up and serve this punch after every recital that we gave, and it made for a extra incentive for me to play well in the recitals so that I wouldn't have to guiltily sip my punch in a corner.  Then, she would let me take the leftover punch home in a large re-purposed mason jar!  When I got older, I was given the important task of making the punch from the ingredients she'd left out on the counter during the last few performers of each recital, which was, to me, one of the largest honors that could be bestowed.

The punch itself is a wonderfully bubbly blend of sweet and seedy pureed raspberries with tart and citrusy lemon lime.  My piano teacher used to make it with lemon lime soda, but I've re-written the recipe here to use fresh lemons, limes, and sparkling water.  The crispness of the freshly squeezed lemon and lime juice better enhances the raspberry flavor of the punch, in my opinion, though don't tell my piano teacher that I said that!  ;-P

I love this punch so much that I really wanted to capture and transform its essence into cake form for my birthday.  This lemon and raspberry-lime layer cake features layers of raspberry-studded lemon cake with raspberry-lime Italian meringue buttercream, and two different curd fillings: lemon and raspberry-lime.  The end result is a cake truly tailor-made and meant for a summertime birthday.

The raspberry-studded lemon cake layers are moist and robust, with pockets of lightly tart baked raspberries inside.  The hint of lime in the raspberry-lime buttercream and raspberry-lime curd filling comes through as a crispness to the overall cake, balancing out the sweetness of the lemon curd filling.  When stacking the layers, I alternated the lemon and raspberry-lime curds, so in each slice, you get both.  You could combine them, too, but I wanted some separation of each of the flavors for extra definition.

Overall, I was very happy with how the translation from sparkling punch to birthday cake turned out!  This cake is totally perfect for enjoying in the summer, in the warm shade away from the hot sun, under a tree or on a porch, with good company and a glass of accompanying raspberry and lemon-lime sparkling punch right next to you.  I think my piano teacher might approve.  As long as I go and practice afterwards, I think.

Happy birthday to all of you other summer babies out there, too!  :-)

Read on for punch and cake recipes...

I like Pina Colada Cupcakes! (and getting caught in the rain)

I wasn't going to post these until next week since they aren't very "traditional" Valentine's Day fare, but they turned out so damn good that they just couldn't wait!  Hello, lover.

Pina colada cupcake:

Coconut cake

with fresh pineapple Italian meringue buttercream

Yes, the pina colada cupcake.  But, before you all get another look at these yummy-licious beauties, I must first inflict some pain on you, because every time I hear or say the words "pina colada," this immediately gets stuck in my head:

Yes, okay, I apologize for that.  But, misery loves company.  Now that we have a soundtrack (of most arguably one of the worst love songs ever), back to more pleasant things.

This idea of pina colada cupcakes has been floating around in my head for a while prior to execution.  The original spark of inspiration, to give credit where credit's due, comes from my friend Toni, who I regard as one of my biggest dessert fans and who happens to be an amazing photographer.  For Christmas, Toni got me Rose Levy Beranbaum's Rose's Heavenly Cakes, promptly opening the book to page 23, pointing, and saying, "I want to make that into a pina colada cake."

A few weeks later (okay, the Christmas gift happened in mid-January), the pina colada cupcake was born (or baked, I guess, would be the more proper word choice)!  With a base of coconut cake, taken from page 23 of Rose Levy Beranbaum's book, and a liberal topping of Italian meringue buttercream flavored with freshly made pineapple puree, this cupcake is absolutely heavenly.  And I am not kidding.  It literally hurt me in the gut to give these cupcakes away to both the people who had ordered them, and, I have to confess, to Toni.  I just wanted to keep them all for myself.

The coconut cake recipe is really good and super coconut-y.  But what really makes these cupcakes for me, personally, is the fresh pineapple puree in the pineapple buttercream.  You absolutely don't want to cut corners here and use canned pineapple.  It's just not going to be the same.  And fresh pineapple puree is easy to make.  All it involves is cooking the pineapple down with sugar and water, draining away the liquid, and whizzing it through the food processor.  The resulting puree is so good and light-as-air that I ate most of it fresh out of the food processor.  It's better than any applesauce you will ever touch.  Don't throw away the pineapple syrup, either!  It makes a great base for homemade pineapple soda (just add fizzy water) or cocktails.

The punch of pineapple and coconut flavors in this cupcake linger in your mouth for a long while even after you've finished the cake, making you really, really crave more.  I can seriously scarf down about ten of those mini ones in one sitting if I'm not careful.  Trust me: make these for your Valentine.  Despite not being made of the traditional chocolate, they are sure to impress.

Oh, but a fair word of warning: you'll most definitely want to make an even number of these cupcakes.  If you and your Valentine have to fight over one, it's not going to be pretty.

(P.S. On an unrelated topic, a reader kindly brought to my attention yesterday that there was no obvious way to subscribe to this blog's feed located on the homepage--a gross oversight on my part!  (Thanks, June, for bringing this to my attention!)  I have since remedied this situation, and you'll find links at the top of the side bar -----> that can allow you to subscribe easily via your feed reader of choice (e.g., Google Reader) or via email (Thanks to my Adopt-a-Blogger mentor, Kristen, for pointing me in the right direction for this).  So go subscribe!

In other blog-related news, I've started a recipe index page, also located for now on the *new* left sidebar <----, where you can find a list of recipes by category.  It's still a work in progress, but hopefully, you'll find it helpful!)

Read on for recipe...

Rose and Basil-Dark Chocolate Macarons

I'm back! from my conference this past weekend, and does it feel good to be back in the kitchen again!

Okay, but before we get to those bite-size pieces of deliciousness, allow me to catch you up with what I've been up to for the past week.  (If you're interested--otherwise, skip to the food pics, I won't take offense.)  This past weekend was the annual national conference for my "day job," and all the linguists of the States (and elsewhere, too) flocked to the sunny Baltimore, Maryland.  This was a particularly big weekend for me, because I had my first talk at said national conference, and it was in a special session organized by the leaders in my subfield.  So I had myself pretty much shut up for the past couple of weeks working on the talk.  Once *that* was out of the way, I tried to see a bit of the city.

Bokeh at Baltimore's Inner Harbour

Unfortunately, we were in a pretty dead area (with no convenient transportation available), and the pub food that was so ubiquitous around the conference area was just downright horrid.  So, no fun food news to report from the weekend.  But, I did get to go to the Walter museum, and on the way, we checked out America's first cathedral/basilica, which we randomly ran into.

The Walter museum was actually one of the best parts of the weekend!  There were awesome exhibits of 16th through 18th century Italian art, arranged in chronological order, so that you could really get a sense of the development of styles throughout the centuries.  This one was a particular favorite of the group of linguists I was with:

Allegory of Grammar

Laurent de la Hyre, 1650

Anyways, despite it being fun to be around all of the people from my field, it is nice to be back in (warmer) California--and back in the kitchen (read: not eating gross, oily, fried bar food every day).  I was so glad, in fact, that I decided to use up the leftover egg whites in my fridge by making macarons (most definitely the antithesis to pub food).

Rose macarons

with dark chocolate-basil buttercream

Now that Christmas and New Year's are over, it's time to look forward to Valentine's Day!  (Yes, it's never too early for the next holiday, in my book.)  So, if roses are supposed to mean that someone likes you, and chocolates are supposed to mean that someone loves you, what about rose macarons with dark chocolate-basil buttercream?  If someone made these for me, personally, I'd probably hop into their arms with little hesitation.  ;-P

In all seriousness, though, the initial inspiration for these macarons did not come from thinking about Valentine's Day.  These are actually inspired by the movie, Like Water for Chocolate.  Now, if you haven't seen the movie yet, I highly recommend it!  We were assigned the film for a Spanish class that I'm taking this quarter, and so I watched it the night I returned from Baltimore.  Long story short, the film (based on the novel) is a long love story, punctuated by different foods that reflect the main character's various emotions throughout.  In one scene where she tries to woo an unrequited lover through her cooking, she makes this roasted quail with rose petal sauce that just looks downright divine.

Ever since then, I've been craving rose myself.  Then, a scoop of rose-vanilla ice cream from Ici in Berkeley today only helped to intensify rather than satisfy my craving.

When I was baking these, the whole house smelled of roses.  It was absolutely wonderful and fragrant!  To go with the macarons, I whipped up a quick dark chocolate buttercream, and to help balance the buttercream with the rose macaron, I added in some freshly-dried basil powder to the chocolate buttercream.  The basil, which you can't really place when you eat these, lends this great earthiness to the buttercream, which helps to keep it on the less-sweet side and compliments the flowery flavor of the rose perfectly.

Quite a nice way to unwind after a weekend of travelling, no?  :-)

Read on for recipe...

Christmas cupcakes!

Last week, I did something completely uncharacteristic of myself: I baked cupcakes.

For anyone who knows me, you'll recognize immediately that baking cupcakes is soooo not me.  I'm not a cupcake girl.  In fact, I have a huge rant prepared about how cupcakes are NOT cute and mini versions of cakes.  No, cute and mini versions of cakes should still look like cakes.  Cute and mini versions of cupcakes should look like cupcakes.  But really, I should spare you all the rant.

And back to the cupcakes.  The other reason that I tend to steer clear of cupcakes is the same reason that I don't like making sugar cookies: the decorating.  There are just so many frosting colors involved!  And the thought of all those little bowls with all of those different colors of frosting, all of which have to be washed at the end of the decorating session, along with all of the spoons that you used to mix the different colors.  Just the thought of it is extremely exhausting to me.  (background note: I abhor doing dishes.)  So, the short of it is that I don't usually do cupcakes.  Mini cupcakes are my thing.

But, for some unexplained, crazy reason last week, I had the sudden urge to make cupcakes.  I think it was all of the peppermint ganache that I'd eaten.  Really, it was.  After making my molten peppermint chocolate cake, I ended up with a few cakes that were left uneaten.  At first, I didn't think that the peppermint ganache would be good after it had cooled and hardened inside the cake, but, upon trying one of the cooled cakes, it tasted really good!  So, why not put peppermint ganache in chocolate cupcakes?  yum yum!

Alas--there was a problem.  Mini-cupcakes just would not do in such a situation.  There just wouldn't be enough room for cake AND chocolate ganache in the mini molds, so full-sized cupcakes it would have to be.  And that's the story of how my Christmas cupcake extravaganza came to be.





Anyways, the cupcakes were super yummy.  The chocolate cake here is THE chocolate cake recipe I turn to for pretty much everything under the sun.  It's so moist, which is perfect here, because the peppermint ganache sort of melts into the chocolate cake and cools to form an amazing amalgamation of pepperminty-chocolatey awesomeness.  Top with a generous dollop of peppermint-schnapps-infused buttercream and some sprinkles, and you're golden.

Oh, and of course I made mini versions as well (not with peppermint ganache).  I mean, everything is better in miniature, no?

Read on for recipe... (this chocolate cake recipe also works well fresh-out-of-the-oven for molten chocolate cakes!)

Vegan chocolate pumpkin cupcakes

This post is an exciting one! since it will be the first time that I'm posting a recipe here on Desserts for Breakfast.  When mentioning and/or talking about my desserts with others, I keep getting asked about my recipes, so by popular demand, I will start including some here in the posts.  The recipes that I post here will be a mix of those adapted from other sources (as noted) and my own.  Please enjoy!

--

For a recent dessert bar order, the host requested that I make a vegan dessert.  I don't do much vegan baking, but when I do, I refuse to compromise in flavor and texture.  I wanted the vegans to have something that even the non-vegans would find scrumptiously delicious and irresistable, so I decided to go with chocolate cupcakes.  I've also been getting fairly excited about the upcoming chilly weather of fall (we're still in the 100 degrees here in California), so I decided to add pumpkin into the "buttercream."

vegan chocolate cake

with pumpkin 'buttercream'

I have to say that this chocolate cake recipe that I tried was so surprising--it totally rivaled even my best non-vegan chocolate cake recipe.  The pumpkin buttercream, however, is a tad sweet, so I would use it with moderation.  I am working on developing a non-vegan pumpkin buttercream that isn't so sweet, so I'll post that when successful.

(btw, these cupcakes were a hit at the wedding.  They were so good that people didn't even know they were vegan and the vegans were shocked to hear that they could eat them.)

Read on after the jump for recipes.

Happy Dissertation!

My friend, Lauren, recently filed her dissertation and officially became a Dr.! So as a present, I made this, since writing a dissertation is most definitely deserving of a chocolate cake.

Chocolate cake
Pistachio-Orange Swiss Meringue Buttercream
Orange Buttercream

(The texture on the side of the cake was done with a silicone pastry brush and purple royal icing. It's actually a pretty cool technique--I'll probably try it again at some point.)

Olympics Spoof Cake

Red velvet cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and hand-cut, sugar paste design (no stenciling).

This is a spoof cake that I did for a 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony viewing party. It's based on this banner that was in China during the Stanford Symphony Tour there before the Olympics. Note that the Olympic rings are wrong on purpose: this is how they were done in a concerthall in China.