I was gifted a delicious apple bread loaf for Mother’s Day from our neighbor and friend Karen, and I have to say this apple bread loaf was outstanding. I’ve never had an apple bread loaf before, so naturally I didn’t know what to expect. What I tried I liked very much 😋.
The loaf itself is unusual as it is not like a cake but rather it had a whole grain nutty texture, which got me wondering if it was made with whole-wheat flour? I asked Karen for the recipe and she graciously shared it with me, and yes, it was made with whole-wheat flour.
This apple bread loaf had a thick topping of a yummy cinnamon sugar and nut mixture, while the loaf itself was not very sweet. In fact, it was so mild on the sweetness scale that if we wanted to we could have had it with some jam. But wait; there was a surprise inside when I cut the loaf! Continue reading Apple Bread Loaf→
An apple cake that is not too sweet, not too dry, but just right? This recipe is the one. This apple cake is the perfect balance of sweet with a little kick of spices, all mixed together with grated fresh apples and fresh ginger. I am loving fresh ginger in sweets and treats lately. I find it adds a nice spicy fragrant kick and especially balances the sweetness of cakes really well.
This is a teacake recipe that I came up with inspired by the giant zucchini our friend Karen dropped off from her garden. I had already made a zucchini curry and a zucchini soup with this giant squash. The next dish had to be something sweet and a teacake seemed like the perfect sweet treat for this super tender zucchini.
When I came up with this teacake recipe I was trying to replicate a zucchini loaf bread I used to have at Peets Coffee & Tea years ago. It was super moist, not too sweet, with some lovely sweet spices, and a few walnuts. I used to admire the delicate green specks of zucchini that always caught my eye when I would take a bite.
One of my twins Rani got in the mood to make some chocolate cupcakes a few weekends ago. But Rani is a picky one; she likes dark chocolate, even in her cupcakes. YES! I thought. I am going to be treated to an adult cupcake made with dark chocolate!
Now as you may know, there are countless chocolate cupcake recipes out there, hundreds of recipes actually. Yet somehow Rani was able to narrow down her search to this one recipe from Gimmesomeoven.com. She asked me to take a look at the recipe for 1: do we have the ingredients and 2: for approval – i.e. is this an easy recipe to follow. I gave her the thumbs up 👍. This is how Rani’s chocolate cupcakes turned out. Pretty cool!
I have been wanting to make this cake for a while now as I’ve been thinking lately of a sweet my Mom used to make when I was younger called coconut burfi – which is a cross between a cookie and a brownie like texture – kind of like a blondie bar but without the eggs. I typically make coconut burfi with coconut, ghee, milk, cardamom, and sugar, all condensed down into thick creamy dough. It is poured into a mould and then cut into pieces after it is cooled. It takes a long time to make and is a lot of work. This coconut cardamom cake is my attempt to replicate a coconut burfi flavor but in a cake form.
If you are like me, you may not be familiar with the pineapple guava fruit. To be honest, I only discovered this fruit five years ago after we moved to our new home. In this beautiful landscape we saw these evergreen bushes with the most gorgeous blossoms.
I recently made a couple of hummingbird cakes to show of some gorgeous nasturtium blossoms that were blooming in my springtime garden. I made one cake with cream cheese frosting, shredded coconut, and orange nasturtium flowers; and a second cake decorated with yellow nasturtiums, pecans and edible leaves and flowers.
In this post I would like to share with you the second hummingbird cake I made with yellow nasturtium flowers, toasted pecans, edible pansies, scented geraniums, and mint leaves.
I had this delicious piece of cake at Peets when I met my friend Roli for coffee one morning. Called Hummingbird Cake, it was moist and light, chock full of nuts, with a soft cream cheese frosting, and it was just perfect 😋.
I assumed it was called hummingbird cake because of all the nuts in the cake, because it reminded me of a birdseed mixture – you know what I mean? But as it turns out when I was looking for a recipe for hummingbird cake what I found out is that the reason it is called a hummingbird cake is because it tastes so good that it makes people hum – go figure 🤔.
What got me motivated to make a hummingbird cake is the opportunity to decorate the cake with my spring blooming nasturtiums. These nasturtium blooms were looking so glorious in my springtime garden that I wanted to show them off in a beautiful dessert. The hummingbird cake with cream cheese frosting made the perfect backdrop for these lovely nasturtium blossoms.
It was a cold wet February afternoon when I was craving a deep dark gingerbread cake. Dark as dark can be, almost glistening black in color, super moist and intensely gingery is the type of gingerbread cake I wanted on this wet and cold afternoon.
For years my friend Georgina made this amazing dark ginger cake any time I requested a sweet treat from her. Georgina’s ginger cake was the best gingerbread I had ever had. Deep Dark Dense Ginger Cake is what I call this fresh ginger cake and nothing came close to it, absolutely nothing. Continue reading Deep Dark Gingerbread Cake→
We planted an orange tree a few months ago and the fruit were ripe and ready to be picked. The idea for this orange tea cake came from our just picked orange harvest.
Have you heard of FIKA? I hadn’t. Not until a few months ago that is, when I was catching up on my daily world news on BBC.com. I came across an article that read Why Are Swedish Workers So Happy?. This article was about FIKA, the Swedish workplace tradition of taking a coffee break with sweet treats and chatting. In many companies in Sweden this coffee break is not only encouraged but in some offices it is actually mandatory. Research has shown that taking a work-place coffee break leads to happier and more productive employees.
I know it’s silly of me, but when I read that people take a coffee break every day with a sweet pastry or two, all I could think of is, “Why aren’t Swedish people overweight?” Eating that much sweet treats every day must have some negative impact on the body. Right?
