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My favourite drink is an Arnold Palmer – half iced tea, half lemon­ade. Paula Deen’s recipe for a cup­cake by the same name didn’t receive very good reviews so I set out to make my own.  And yes, it uses a box cake mix… I know, culi­nary purists are mor­ti­fied, but hey, cake mixes are per­fected and a great time saver, so I say go ahead, there are no rules in your own kitchen!

Oh and don’t for­get to pop on over to Kitchen Rap to see the Sum­mer 2009 Cup­cake Crawl! Vote for these cup­cakes or my “You’ll go bananas” entry…

Yield: Approx 18 cup­cakes Prep time: 10 mins Bake time: 17–20 mins Ingre­di­ents: 1 Betty Crocker or sim­i­lar super moist lemon box cake mix 1/3 cup veg­etable oil 1 1/4 cups milk 3 Large Eggs 4 White Tea Bags or loose leaf equivalent.

Lemon & White Tea Cupcakes

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Method:

Pre­heat oven to 350F. Either spray a cup­cake pan or line with cup­cake papers.

Heat milk to around 130F and steep tea bags or leaf for five min­utes. Strain milk through fine sieve or strainer to remove any tea leaves. Allow milk to cool before adding to mix­ture so as not to cook the eggs.

In a mix­ing bowl, add cake mix, tea infused milk, oil and eggs. Beat on medium speed for two min­utes. Scrape side and bot­tom of bowl to ensure no dry mix left.

Fill cup­cake pan to three quar­ters full and bake for around 17–20 mins. Cup­cakes should be golden and spring back on top when depressed slightly.

Cool com­pletely before frost­ing with your favourite lemon but­ter­cream. Fin­ish off by zest­ing some fresh lemon rind across the top.

These are more lemon flavoured with just a hint of the tea. I will be try­ing out dif­fer­ent tea types in future batches. Enjoy!

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Why is it that when you take your eyes off the fruit bowl for one day the bananas end up black and over­ripe?  I hate to see fruit go bad and luck­ily when it’s bananas you can still use them for yummy banana bread or in this case banana cupcakes!

Be sure to visit Kitchen Rap & Gourmet Girl’s 2009 Sum­mer Cup­cake Crawl to vote on the lus­cious cup­cake entries.. of course a vote for me would be great too!

Banana Cup­cakes

Ingredients 4oz (125g) but­ter 6oz (175g) sugar 2 eggs 2 large mashed ripe bananas (or 3 med sized) 1 tsp Bak­ing soda 2 Tbsp boil­ing milk 1 tsp bak­ing power 8oz (225g) flour

Method Cream but­ter & sugar for around 2 min­utes prefer­ably in your stand mixer with a pad­dle attach­ment.  Or you can do it by hand if you’re up to it! Add eggs one at a time. Add mashed bananas. Add bak­ing soda that has been dis­solved in hot milk. Lastly mix in sifted flour & bak­ing powder. Spoon into cup­cake papers and bake at 350 deg F for around 20 mins.  They should begin to get golden on top but don’t over bake. Glaze Ingre­di­ents 1/4 cup butter 2 cups pow­dered sugar 2 tbsp milk, (or you can use heavy cream for thicker glaze) extract/flavoring — I used Banana and it was great! Melt 1/4 cup (4 table­spoons) of but­ter in a saucepan or microwave. Sift 2 cups of pow­dered sugar into a medium size bowl. Add the melted but­ter to the pow­dered sugar. Add 2 table­spoons of milk. If desired, add 1/4 tea­spoon of almond extract or 1/2 tea­spoon of vanilla for flavor. Beat until smooth and creamy, adding a lit­tle more milk if necessary. Driz­zle over a cooled cake. Tips: For a richer and creamier glaze, use heavy cream in place of the milk. Sub­sti­tute cit­rus juice for the milk and add a lit­tle grated zest for a cit­rus glaze.

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One of my husband’s cowork­ers loves straw­ber­ries appar­ently and tomor­row is her birth­day. So I’m mak­ing a cake so filled with straw­ber­ries it’ll blow her mind!

	Straw­berry cake with a straw­berry sim­ple syrup infused with mascer­ated straw­ber­ries between the lay­ers. Then I made an ital­ian but­ter­cream for the fill­ing and crum­b­coat. I then topped it with a straw­berry cream cheese but­ter­cream, a clear straw­berry sauce I made, fresh sliced and choco­late dipped strawberries.
Do you think she’ll get her fill of straw­berry??
	The frill around the sides is done with a St. Hon­ore’ tip… I need to work on my con­ti­nu­ity but I hadn’t used that tip before is my excuse!

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Just fin­ished this wed­ding cake as a demon­stra­tion project.  I wanted to have com­pleted a LOT more of the gumpaste roses and other flow­ers but time was lim­ited.  I will be adding more before I enter this in one of the upcom­ing cater­ing com­pe­ti­tion events.  I had planned on paint­ing black flow­ers on the white fon­dant tiers but went with a more dec­o­ra­tive design.

This is white cake which is filled and crumb coated with a crust­ing cream cheese but­ter­cream. It is then cov­ered with white fon­dant which has black hand painted dec­o­ra­tions. The green tier that sup­ports the flow­ers is a foam drum cov­ered in fon­dant. I don’t agree with stick­ing wired flow­ers directly into the cake, hence the need for a foam sup­port layer for the flow­ers in the mid­dle and on top. The flow­ers and leaves are made from gumpaste, wired and hand painted with col­ored petal dust. The orig­i­nal inten­tion was to only use roses but with the loom­ing com­ple­tion date I added ger­bera daisies to fill out the sec­tions more quickly. The black bands are col­ored fondant. I am now ready to move on to other projects and work. Hope­fully I will have more time to devote to my blog­ging which has suf­fered over the last few weeks due to project work and my daughter’s grad­u­a­tion from college.

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Dobos Cake (/‘doboʃ/, Hun­gar­ian: dobostorta) is a famous Hun­gar­ian cake, invented by and named after a well-known Hun­gar­ian con­fec­tioner, József C. Dobos (1847–1924) in 1884. It is a five-layer sponge cake, lay­ered with choco­late but­ter­cream and topped with thin caramel slices. The sides of the cake are some­times coated with ground hazel­nuts, chest­nuts, wal­nuts or almonds but the orig­i­nal cake is with­out coat, since it was a slice of a big cake. Dobos’s aim was to make a cake that would last longer than other pas­tries, in an age when cool­ing tech­niques were lim­ited. The caramel top­ping helps keep the cake from dry­ing out. The cake is also often called ‘Dobos-torta’ or ‘Dobostorta’.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is my Dobos Torte…  We made ours rec­tan­gu­lar and topped it with a poured caramel that set hard but before it did I scored it with a knife into por­tioned pieces.

I will get the recipe entered tomor­row (Sat­ur­day 2/21)

The guys that work with my Hus­band really enjoyed this treat!

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I love bak­ing for oth­ers so of course Valentine’s Day pro­vides ample oppor­tu­nity.  I’m get­ting an early start by mak­ing these deli­cious red vel­vet cup­cakes for my friends.  Hubby has three to take to work for the guys and I will take the rest with me.

These lit­tle beau­ties have a hid­den gooey cream cheese frost­ing cen­ter and are also topped with more and then rolled in sparkly red sugar just for fun.

I had to try this recipe out.  It’s not mine it’s from my friend over at Art of Dessert who has per­fected it!

Red Vel­vet Cake
1 1/2 cups but­ter, soft­ened to room tem­per­a­ture
2 1/4 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups vanilla yogurt
1 ounce red food col­or­ing (liq­uid or gel)
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 1/4 cups flour
3 Tbs. cocoa pow­der
2 tsp. bak­ing pow­der
1 1/2 tsp. bak­ing soda
3/4 tsp. salt

Pre­heat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two 8-inch or 9-inch cake pans or line three muf­fin pans with cup­cake liners.

In a large mix­ing bowl, cream but­ter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Com­bine yogurt, red food col­or­ing and vanilla extract in a small bowl. Sift together flour, cocoa pow­der, bak­ing pow­der, bak­ing soda and salt in another bowl. Alter­nate adding the yogurt mix­ture and flour mix­ture into the large bowl. Pour bat­ter into pre­pared pans or lined muf­fin pans. Bake for 30–35 min­utes (15–20 min­utes for cup­cakes) or until a tooth­pick inserted in the cen­ter of the cake comes out clean. Cool completely.

Cream Cheese Frosting

With the mixer on a low speed, beat the cream cheese and but­ter till blended. Mix in vanilla and lemon extracts. Slowly add the pow­dered sugar, a cup at a time. Once all the pow­dered sugar is added, increase to a higher speed to whip up the frost­ing till light and fluffy.

Recipe by Art of Dessert