Movin' on Up...

 Hi there Fellow Eater,

I have moved the blog over to Wordpress so I can add a little more functionality like recipe cards, print options for recipes, search functions, etc. I will be posting there from here on out. Be sure to head over there and also add me on Instagram @KateBakesCakes87 to follow along as well. 

Thanks for 8 years of following along on Blogger! See you at the new site.

Sincerely,

Kate

Just in Lime for Summer

I'd like to point out I've managed to make it all the way to the middle of May before I started complaining about summer heat this year. If we still lived in Florida, these tantrums would've began in February, so thank you, New Mexico: the land of enchantment and lower A/C bills. Plus it's a dry heat, so if you place me in the shade with a cold beverage, I can make it approximately 90 minutes without a single complaint. It's a personal best. But one thing summer always makes me want is a Cherry Limeade from Sonic. Because I draw the lime at suffering through the heat without some form of thirst-quenching goodness. I had one a few weeks ago, and it inspired me to try turning it into a cake. I mean, that's why we're all here, right? As great as I am with a turn of phrase, we're here for dessert.

My charming wit is the cherry on top of my personality, though.

You shouldn't look directly into the sun or probably at this cake without risk of retinal scarring. I apologize. It's like a 90s Lisa Frank fever dream, but you can eat it! Now I'm feeling both nostalgic and a little dizzy, but that could either be from the heat or my eyes are about to pop out of my head due to how bright this cake is. I will say its flavor is sub-lime...it tastes cherry delicious. I've turned a lot of drinks into cake flavors, but this is hands-down the closest interpretation to the real thing. Sweet cherry flavor with a sour lime bite--it's completely refreshing which also makes it very dangerous. I can down a Route 44 diet Cherry Limeade in approximately two minutes, and I'm pretty sure I could eat half this cake in the same amount of time. Good thing it's only 264 calories a slice for 12 slices, or we'd have a swimsuit season snafu on our hands.

Wondering if you have a cut on any of your fingers? Discover every open wound with the help of citrus! Curing scurvy and causing debilitating hang-nail burning since the dawn of time.

I juiced so many limes for this cake and found so, so many cuts on my hands whose existence prior to that point were completely unknown. It was a real hoot. For the cake you need:

• 1 box of yellow or white cake mix (I tried Cup4Cup gluten free yellow cake mix)
• 1 packet of sugar free cherry Jell-o
• 1 cup of milk
• 3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
  
• 1/4 cup of fresh squeezed lime juice* 
• 1 tsp lime zest
  
• 4 egg whites  
• 1 tsp almond extract
• Chopped maraschino cherries to your preference (I used 56 grams)
• Hot pink gel dye
  

*You could also use bottled lime juice. Kind of against baking rules, but using it is more of a white collar lime, so light punishment only if you're caught.

Preheat your oven to 325 and grease three 6-inch round or two 8-inch round cake pans with cooking spray. With a whisk attachment, whip the milk, applesauce, lime juice, lime zest, extract, and egg whites until slightly fluffy. Add in the cake mix and Jell-o, whisking just until everything comes together. Fold in the chopped cherries by hand. Evenly distribute batter into your pans and bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Start checking around 30 minutes if using the 8-inch pans.

These layers deserve a turn in the limelight.

Once done baking, leave your cakes in the pan for 10 minutes while on a cooling rack. Turn these out on the rack to completely cool before frosting. You can plop your cooling rack into the fridge or freezer to speed this up.
 

Oh look, more limes. I would love to know how many limes Sonic uses in a day. I'm sure its more than six, but does the same person have to cut and juice them all day? My hangnails just recoiled in horror.

I have not made a traditional buttercream in about two years because I find it way too sweet and calorie dense. I made it for this cake because I needed very stiff frosting to pipe a particular pattern on top of the cake. Spoiler alert: the pattern didn't work, so I scraped it off and started over with something completely different. 

I made this a naked cake for a few reasons: less buttercream/lower calories, I wanted the cake layer colors to show through, and my husband is currently away, so I wanted to be able to take the top layer off to freeze it for him to have when he gets home. I know, I'm shocked I share cake, too.

To make the buttercream, you need:

• 1 cup of butter at room temp
• 4 cups of powered sugar or Lakanto powdered monkfruit
• 1/4 cup plus 1 tsp lime juice
• 1 tsp almond extract
• Hot pink and lime green gel dyes
• Large round tip and two 125 petal tips or another large round tip
  

Whip the butter until fluffy in a stand mixer, about 3 minutes. Add in half the powdered monkfruit, the almond extract, and half the lime juice, mixing well then scraping the bowl. Add in the rest of the powdered monkfruit and lime juice, blending fully. Remove a third of the frosting to another bowl and dye hot pink. Dye the frosting in the main mixing bowl lime green.

Once upon a lime, when I still had hope this cake would turn out how I wanted.

Place a cooled cake layer face down, then take split your frostings: fill a piping bag with large round tip with half the green frosting, another with the 125 petal tip and the rest of the green frosting, and the final bag with another 125 petal tip and hot pink frosting.

Is...is it alien poo?

With the large round tip, pipe circle blobs around the edge of your cake layer. Now grab an angled spatula.

Whew, looks more like a flower now. That's relaxing and not at all gross.

Take your angled spatula, and in the middle of one blob, push down and swipe away, pulling your frosting toward the middle of the cake. Repeat on all blobs. You will need to add a little dollop of frosting in the middle and just smooth this out; nothing fancy needed here since no one will see it. Unless knowing it isn't piped exactly the same bothers you, then by all means, let your OCD take the wheel.

Pretty sure this looks like a giant Lady Gaga Oreo.

Add your next layer, and repeat with the blobbing.

This cake is very psychedelic. I do not recommend making this cake if you're on any form of drugs. Even Benadryl. I'm afraid of what could happen.

Exsqueeze me, you are not what I was going for...

I added my final layer, tried to pipe a herringbone pattern, and it just was not working. I didn't use a coupler, so I was stuck with two giant bags of frosting with large petal tips. You could make waves with this, but I wanted a pattern that would match the middle layers of frosting, so I piped alternating colors with the large end of the frosting tip facing me. I would've preferred to use the large circle tips to pipe alternating blobs of color, and dragged those to the center of the cake like the middle layers, but it is what it is (and what it is is still edible cake).

I repeated a few more circles while cursing my lack of foresight. I ALWAYS use couplers. The one time I don't...

It's incredibly colorful, but not what I was going for, so I'm sad. Which means I need cake, so boy does this ever work out in the end.

Now, for the actual cherries on top.

Best part of the Cherry Limeade is the cherry waiting for you in the bottom of your cup. You know you're gonna get to chew on that amazing Sonic ice to get to it, and this is your final reward for making an excellent beverage choice from start to absolute finish. Moral of the story: don't forget to add more cherries to the top of your cake to tie everything together.

Brighter than 1,000 suns, this one.

 You will have a LOT of leftover frosting (I used half). This can be frozen and used again at a later date or shame-eaten because your design didn't turn out the way you wanted. 100% up to you...

Just looking at it makes me both thirsty and hungry at the same time.

For the full experience, go grab a Cherry Limeade from Sonic, then eat a slice of this cake. It will BLOW YOUR MIND. You could say this cake is my main squeeze right now. It really and truly tastes exactly like the drink which makes me extremely happy and way less of a sourpuss dealing with the summer heat and the sun's infernal rage. The cherry and lime are meant to be together, and the burst of cherry chunks in the cake mixed with the citrus from the lime are bliss. I don't even mind the traditional buttercream frosting either; the lime juice balances everything out just right so it isn't sickeningly sweet. I may start wearing sunglasses while I eat it though because looking directly at this cake is like stepping outside from a dark movie theater into the sun. Worth it. 'Til next time, my fellow eaters!

Made it just in lime for summer!

Every Bunny Loves Carrot Cake

I'm a fan of Easter simply because it's the Spring Edition of "There Are No Rules: We Begin Eating Chocolate at Sunrise," much like how Christmas is the Winter Edition of "There Are REALLY No Rules: Cake Pairs Well with Spiked Hot Chocolate at Dawn." I knew I wanted to do a bunch of baking for the holiday weekend, but I turned into a bit of an Easter basket case Thursday when our fridge stopped working (despite my best efforts to repair it). I was down to a tiny beer fridge in my husband's office and a small fridge out in the garage...I wasn't sure I'd have room for a single cupcake after moving everything out of our broken kitchen fridge and freezer. Needless to say, after throwing out a ton of spoiled meats and fancy ice creams, some bunny needed cake (it was me. I'm some bunny).

They are simply ear-resistible.

Where there's a will to bake, there's a way to make those baked goods fit into a tiny fridge. I'd like to thank Tetris for preparing me for this exact life moment because these carrot cake and cupcakes are 14-carrot gold in the flavor department. Filled with pineapple, carrots, Craisins, and the most delicious cream cheese frosting, each bite is eggs-travagantly delicious. I'm not a huge carrot cake person (really, vegetables in a cake?), but since carrots are a sweeter veg, I'd say hoppiness can sometimes be as simple as a really good carrot cake. However, the moment anyone tells me to put riced cauliflower or spinach in a dessert recipe is the day I quit baking. These appropriately-vegetabled cupcakes and cakes are only 173 a slice/cupcake (20 servings total). I'd say it's an Easter miracle, but well, I don't want to walk outside and get struck by lightning or anything smite-adjacent.
 

I may be a cake eggs-pert, but this box mix threw me for a loop.

I tried a Natural Grocer's find as the base for this cake. I don't like to throw too many of my own adaptations into a brand/mix I've never worked with before, so I mainly followed the directions on the cake box for the carrot cake recipe. I had a gut feeling the batter needed more liquid in it, but I went ahead as it told me to. Unfortunately, my gut was right (it's a seasoned pro at cake eating, after all), and the cake ended up being very tough. It wasn't over baked or over mixed, so I attribute a lack of moisture to be the culprit. Don't get me wrong, the flavor is still AMAZING, but I like each bite to taste like a fluffy cloud of cakey goodness, not a cement brick of cakey goodness. I'll add my suggestion below; I'll definitely use this mix again because the flavor is SO GOOD, just with added liquid to keep things softer and lighter and less like (weighs an actual) pound cake.

• 1 box of Namaste GF spice cake mix
• 3 egg whites (92 grams)
  
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (111 grams)
  
• 1 1/2 cups grated carrots; I processed into a fine pulp in my food processor (75 grams)
  
• 1/2 cup of less sugar Craisins or regular raisins (80 grams)
• 8 ounces crushed pineapple with juices (226 grams)
• I would add 1/4 cup of milk to this next time
  

Because the batter was thicker than a solid chocolate Easter bunny.

Preheat your oven to 350 and prepare a muffin tin with 12 cupcake liners and spray an 8-inch round pan with cooking spray. Alternatively, you could make 24 cupcakes or two 8-inch rounds. Blend the cake mix, egg whites, applesauce, and pineapple on medium-high in a stand mixer for 30 seconds. Add in the Craisins and carrots until everything has come together. Pour into your prepared pans and bake the cupcakes for 20 minutes and the cake round for 25. A toothpick should come out of each with just a small amount of crumb on it.

This made my house smell good for THREE WHOLE DAYS (avoid joke about Easter miracle).

Let everything cool in the pan for 10 minutes before turning out to cool completely on a cooling rack. Or, you know, in a fridge if you have one that works.
 

What, you don't buy your vanilla extract in the same size as a handle of booze?

The cream cheese frosting is super simple to put together but an absolute must with carrot cake. Without cream cheese frosting, it's just a mix of fruits and vegetables in bread pretending to be cake. 

• 8 ounces of 1/3 the fat cream cheese at room temp (225 grams)
• 1 cup of plain Greek yogurt, strained overnight (226 grams)
• 3 cups of Lakanto powdered monkfruit or powdered sugar (360 grams)
• 2 tsp CLEAR vanilla extract (we're making Easter bunny, not dust bunny cupcakes, no brown extract)
• If your frosting is too thick, add 1 TBS milk

Whip the cream cheese until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Then add in the yogurt, blending well, then half the monkfruit, and the 2 teaspoons of extract. Mix, scrape the bowl well, and add the remaining sugar.

 Now, to make bunny cupcakes you will need a few more items:

• Hot pink gel dye
• Black gel dye
  
• Hot pink sanding sugar
• White sanding sugar
• #2 round tip (2 of them)
• Large marshmallows

 To make the bunny cake you will need:

• Blue gel dye
• Hot pink gel dye
• Black gel dye
• Tips 125, 104, 1A, and 2 (having two here also helps)

You can take a tiny bit of frosting to dye black since you only need it for eyes on either cake or cupcakes, and you don't need much more dyed pink for the noses and ears. You need more plain white frosting than anything else, and a decent amount of blue to frost the top of the cake. I had a bunch of leftover frosting, so you don't have to skimp. Once prepared, decorating is an absolute breeze.

Cut a large marshmallow in half diagonally.

The cut sides will be nice and sticky, so roll those face down in some pink sanding sugar.

Add a layer of white frosting to the top of every cupcake, then gently roll in the white sanding sugar.

Gently press the backs of the ears into the frosting.

Then use your black frosting with a #2 round tip to pipe little eyes.

And do the same with the pink frosting to make little noses. You could easily pipe a heart for the nose, but I was going 'minimalist bun' to match my cake.

Which I slathered a layer of blue frosting on first, then let chill in the tiny amount of free space left in our garage fridge.

I also had my prepared frosting chilling in the fridge for 10 minutes.

 For reference, the 1A large round tip and 125 petal tip are for the bunny ears and face. You'll need to alternate between the 2 tip and the 104 petal tip with the pink frosting for the nose and ears; the other 2 tip can be used with the black frosting for the eyes.

I am literally all ears.

 I just randomly piped ears first with the #125 tip; the round side of the tip should be pointed up to make the top of the ears. You just need to apply gentle pressure to pipe each ear and gently pull away. A full video can be found at my inspiration for this cake here. 

At this point, we've got a sky full of bunny clouds.

Add the heads with the 1A round tip, and use an angled spatula to smooth out if needed.

Giving me real Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit vibes. How hare-raising.

Use the round tips to give your bunnies eyes and noses unless you want some weird dystopian Easter thing going on. Use the 104 tip, also round side pointed up, to gently place pink onto the whites of the ears. I found it easiest to pipe and gently pull down, then away for this.

Don't worry. Be hoppy.

I have to add in that my calorie calculation for these cupcakes does NOT include the marshmallow ears because marshmallows are only edible when melted and sandwiched between chocolate and a graham cracker. Don't even get me started on Peeps. They are an abomination and must be stopped. Whoever decided to take a marshmallow and make it even less edible than usual, but dye it hot pink!, is clearly evil.

These little bunnies though? Pure innocence.

But this cake is absolutely my favorite.

Oh look, it's a bunny getting a photo taken of itself while also getting more bunny ears. This was accidental, but perfect positioning nonetheless.

The one on the bottom left just looks like it doesn't carrot. It's a punny rabbit.

Well not exactly Easter hot cross buns, but insanely cute buns abound instead with either the cake or cupcakes, so you can't go wrong. Add in a little extra liquid with this recipe, and I know it would be absolutely the perfect balance of dense carrot cake with a spring in each bite. I love the spices that come together in carrot cake, and anything that has pineapple in it I will eat with reckless abandon (especially pizza--where it belongs--and I will fight you on this). The cream cheese frosting is extra tangy with the use of the Greek yogurt, so it's a perfect addition to the spices and the sweetness of the pineapple and Craisins. Basically, this is the recipe that will make you a carrot cake lover and not just a carrot cake tolerator. I am hoping for a hoppy ending with the fridge saga, but at least I carved out enough space to keep these beautiful bunnies refrigerated. I hope you eat your body weight in ham, chocolate eggs, and carrot cake today--as is Easter tradition.'Til next time, my fellow eaters!

These bunnies won't judge you.

Simply the Zest

I love gloomy weather. Is it grey and cloudy? Good. It is raining? Better. Is it snowing? Best. Needless to say, after five very long, very winter-less years in Florida, I was stoked to be back in New Mexico where it gets cloudy, rainy, and snowy sometimes all in the same day during the winter months. Sadly, we went from mid 40s to low 80s this week, so I think we've skipped straight from winter to summer. I generally need a spring-buffer to prepare my frail, heat-hating body for the sun's rage in the summer (it has literally zero chill). Since I knew I needed some lemon-aid to get through this hot weather, I turned to my favorite coping mechanism: the cheesecake. I wanted spring vibes happening inside my house if they weren't going to take place outside of it, so I made the cheesecake lemon flavored and accidentally turned it into a giant daisy during the decorating process.

Daisy me rollin', they hatin'....

March went by in a blur, and I try to blog once a month, so I had to squeeze one in before April and all it's foolery. I haven't made cheesecake since November (which apparently means my mental health has been optimal this winter since feelings-eating hasn't been a thing), so I knew it was time to bust out the springform pan for springtime eatings. I know lemon typically has a summer-flavor connotation with it, but I felt this was the right call for my cheesecake flavor because like me, lemons are also small, thick-skinned, and slightly bitter. THIS. CHEESECAKE. It is positively divine. It is tart but creamy, sweet but sour, and probably the best thing I've eaten all month (and the only thing I want to eat for the rest of it). It is light and refreshing but also truly satisfies my gigantic sweet tooth, like a lemon bar married a cheesecake and had really tasty children. Thankfully, each slice is fewer than 300 calories (282 to be exact) for 8 slices total. I am sharing with my husband, lover of all things sour, so there may be some battling toward the end of this beauty.

One of us is bound to squeeze the day and take that final lemony slice.

I am not a fan of cheesecake crusts that go all the way up the side of the cheesecake. I like a small, thin layer of crust because I want less filler and more filling. If you need more graham cracker crust than there is actual cheesecake, just save yourself some time and go make s'mores. For my lighter crust, I use:

• 1 cup (120 grams) Kinnikinnick gluten free graham crumbs
• 2 TBS (24 grams) Lakanto granular monkfruit sweetener
• 2 TBS (28 grams) light butter

To make, I preheat my oven to 375 and line an 8-inch springform pan with Parchment paper and spray with Pam. I mix all 3 ingredients in my food processor until the crumbs look wet. I spray my hands with Pam and press the crust into the prepared pan. Bake time will vary from 10-15 minutes by oven. This was my first regular cheesecake in our new kitchen, and my oven definitely over-bakes quickly, which I unfortunately learned the hard way with this crust (it was a real whoopsy daisy, if you will). Baked at 12 minutes, it is very, very tanned. Ten minutes next time, for sure.

This was pre-sunburning.

I placed my crust into the freezer to cool down while I made my filling. I also turned my oven off to cool down a bit since bake temp for the cheesecake is lower.

Lemons the size of my whole friggin' hand brought to you by Albertsons.

This filling is super easy to make, and given that cheesecakes are known prima donnas in the dessert world, that's saying something. All you need is:

• 8 ounces (225 grams) 1/3 the fat cream cheese at room temp
• 1/2 cup (96 grams) Lakanto classic monkfruit sweetener
• 14 ounces (398 grams) fat free plain Greek yogurt, strained overnight
  
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 cup (58 grams) lemon juice (I only used 1 of the ridiculously large lemons for this)
• 1 TBS lemon zest (still only 1 lemon needed since these were terrifyingly large lemons)
• 3 eggs at room temp
• OPTIONAL: if you don't have lemons or don't want to zest and juice, try using 2 tsp of lemon extract to taste; you may need more depending on how tart you want your cheesecake
• To be used for topping:
• 5 ounces (142 grams) lemon curd
• 85 grams Cool Whip Free
  

Turn the oven to 350 degrees, then mix the cream cheese and sugar in a stand mixer with paddle attachment for 3 minutes on medium-high. Add in the strained yogurt and mix well before adding in the zest, juice, and vanilla extract on medium-high. I scrape the bowl at this point, then add in the eggs on low speed, one at a time.

Then prepare for a weird-looking ritual.

Before I pour my filling onto my cooled crust, I always line the pan with several overlapping sheets of foil and two crockpot liners to keep water out of the crust during the water bath. My middle name should be "Safety" because there is no step I won't take to ensure the well-being of my baked goods. I then pour my filling on top of my crust and place this into a large roasting pan before filling the pan with 4-5 cups of very hot water. I baked at 350 for 1 hour and 5 minutes, until the edges of the cheesecake were getting golden and set but the center was still jiggly. Then I turned off my oven, cracked the door open, and let the cheesecake finish baking for 1 hour. It may seem like a lot of weird hoop-jumping, but this process has never steered me wrong in yielding a cheesecake without any cracks on the top.

If a lemon curd, it would.

At this point, I moved my frozen Cool Whip Free from the freezer to the fridge to thaw out overnight, and I moved my cheesecake from the oven to a cooling rack so I could use a sharp knife to run around the edge of the pan. Then I placed the cheesecake + rack into my fridge for 30 minutes to cool.

Now it's time for the icing on the (cheese)cake.

I filled a piping bag with 5 ounces of lemon curd, snipped the tip, and piped the curd around the center of the cooled cheesecake before smoothing out with an angled spatula, leaving about a 1-inch edge without curd:

This picture makes me want a fried egg.

Now, since cheesecakes like to do nothing more than be, well, lazy daisies, cover with plastic wrap and let this set overnight in the fridge.

They're always worth the wait, though.

The next day, like a kid on Christmas morning (or someone obsessed with dessert), I ran to the fridge to remove the springform pan and finish my cheesecake.

Circle the part you want to eat...

I used 85 grams of Cool Whip Free plopped into a piping bag with a 1M tip to make a large circle for my inadvertent flower petals to sit on top of...I was really just going for a cool swirly pattern but it ended up looking like a daisy in a twist of good fate.

Spring has sprung. Right onto my fork. Straight into my belly.

I piped a zigzag back and forth on top of the circle base, and I looks pretty nifty. At this point, you could cut and serve, but it was only 9 a.m., so I very sadly placed my cheesecake back into the fridge and shuffled away, longingly gazing at my fridge and willing the clock to spring further forward to dessert time.

It just looks so happy, so bright, so ready to be cut into reasonably-sized pieces.

Alexa, play "Here Comes the Sun."

I'm more of Stones girl myself, but I'll give the Beatles their just desserts (ha!) for writing that bop because it's been on a loop in my head since the first bite of this cheesecake. Creamy cheesecake flavor meets tangy lemon curd and sweet Cool Whip topping? This is perhaps the first time I've been excited about spring's arrival since I was still young enough to hunt for Easter eggs.

It's almost as pretty as an Easter egg, too.

And those accidental daisy petals are just perfect.

I might have had whatever the opposite of the winter blues is called (cold weather contentment?), for the last four-plus months, so it's probably a good thing it's getting hot out or I might never have been sad enough to make this delicious cheesecake. Just thinking about how decadent yet light, sweet yet sour, and accidentally floral this cheesecake is brings me a joy not even the sun can outshine. And the zest, as they say, is history. 'Til next time, my fellow eaters!

Have a nice daisy! I plan on having several (slices).