Graduation Cake

I made this cake yesterday for those from my church group who were graduating. There were 12 of them, so I made 12 peanut butter cup grad hats. I wasn't super thrilled with this picture, or the cake. But it was cute.

Also, this was the first cake that I did with my two newest cake-baking tools. First of all, I bought a 12"x17" cake pan, so that I could make large cakes in fewer batches. Which was super helpful! Also, I am so very thrilled that I also bought a bright red, beautiful KitchenAid Stand Mixer! It is lovely, and makes my life a lot easier as well!

Ordination Cake

This Sunday our church had an ordination ceremony/celebration for one of our pastors. So, of course, there was cake. :)

I wasn't super thrilled with how it turned out. It was supposed to look like a cloud with a beam of light shining out of it onto the little figurine of our pastor. But everyone just thought it looked like a funny looking mushroom. Also, I need to practice printing on the cake.

White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake

I love this cheesecake recipe. It is super tasty, although its a little tricky. And it uses just about every bowl/pot in the house.

1 cup chocolate cookie crumbs (I used Biscoff cookie crumbs)
3 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup butter

300 gr (ish) frozen raspberries
2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp corn starch
1/2 cup water

2 cups white chocolate chips
1/2 cup half and half cream

3 pkgs (250 gr) cream cheese
1/2 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 325. Grease a 9-inch springform pan.

Melt butter. Mix with sugar and cookie crumbs. Press mixture into the bottom of the pan.

Combine raspberries, 2 tbsp sugar, corn starch and water in a medium pot. Bring to a boil and then continue boiling until thickened. Strain mixture through a mesh strainer to get out the seeds.

In a double boiler, or (carefully) in the microwave, melt chocolate chips together with half and half until smooth.

Beat together 1/2 cup sugar with cream cheese. When this is fluffy, start beating in the eggs one at a time. Blend in the vanilla and white chocolate mixture.

Pour about half the batter over top of the crust. Spoon a few tablespoons of the raspberry mixture over the cheese goo. Pour in the rest of the batter. Spoon another few tablespoons on top. Run the tip of a knife through the batter, just a little, to create a marbled effect.

Bake for 55-60 minutes, using whichever method you prefer to prevent cracks. Cool, then refrigerate at least 8 hours. Serve with white chocolate curls, fresh raspberries and remaining raspberry sauce.


This recipe was what really convinced me that I want a stand mixer. I beat the cream cheese and the sugar in our food processor, which made life so much easier than usual. However, when I added all the other ingredients it kind of overflowed the food processor. (Our food processor has a hole in the middle where the blade attaches, I filled it up too far and overflowed it through the middle) Which made me decide that I should get a real stand mixer.

Engineering the Cake

So every year our school celebrates Engineering Week. This is a week with social events like games nights and bowling, fun competitions, like (banned) soldering competitions and edible car races and charity events, like smashing cars. Also, during E-Week there tends to be a significant increase in the number of large items found hanging off of the local bridge. And at the end of the week there is a wrap up event to announce the winners. This year, they wanted cake at the wrap up event, and so I was asked if I would be willing to provide a pair of cakes for the event.


I'm really happy with how both of these turned out. They were a lot of work, but I really enjoyed it. Each of the cakes is made up of four of my regular 9x13 recipe of chocolate cake. And the icing is my standard chocolate butter cream. I used an excessive amount of red food colouring to get the colours right, and overall I was really happy with how it turned out!

Gingerbread!

So the other day I was complimented on how up-to-date I am with my blog. So to disprove this I thought I should write this post, which is either 2 months or 1 year, 2 months late. Depending on how you look at it.

I thought I'd show you the gingerbread houses that I've made over the past two years.

First, the 2009 Gingerbread House

As you should do before you make any gingerbread house, I started by collecting a large amount of decorating candy.
Then I put the house together. In the past we've used boiled sugar glue to stick the house together but that usually results in burnt fingers and burnt-sugar covered gingerbread that no one wants to eat.
So instead I found a recipe for a cement-like royal icing. Which worked a lot better, and was much tastier.

Next you decorate it...
Don't forget the Christmas Hippo in the garden.

The hardest part of this whole project was the candy-cane fence. It was really, really hard to find enough candy canes that were still in one piece to use. And then you still had to make them stand up. It was tricky, but it looked really neat.
The finished product. Our family Gingerbread House for Christmas 2009.

Then, this past year, for Christmas of 2010, my younger cousins were in town for a pre-Christmas visit so I thought that it would be fun for all of us to make gingerbread houses. We made two of them, one for them to take home and one to stay at our house.

This is the house my cousins made, it was fairly traditional, and covered in tasty, tasty candy.
They did some really cute stuff with it, like a skating rink.
And a little man in overalls with his snowman.
A reindeer on the roof...

And Penguins on the back wall!
The finished product!
Apparently the Gingerbread house survived the 8 hour drive home (except for the roof corner that I accidentally broke while trying to put in a box to go home) but most of the candy did not!

I decided to do something a little different this year and so, instead of a traditional gingerbread
house I constructed a gingerbread barn!
There's a pond with a frog...
A pen with some animals and a silo. I wanted to make the silo completely purple-y blue, like the one the farm where I spent parts of my summers while I was in high school.

There is also a farmer in the front yard.
I put the hayloft on the wrong part of the barn. But its still cute.

I found all the patterns online and a whole bunch more that I want to try. Next year I'm going to be very tempted to make an entire gingerbread town!

So, now, what you probably are looking for, the recipe for my Gingerbread! Now, there is a story behind this recipe: when I was in elementary school, every Christmas time students from the 5th grade class would come around and sell raffle tickets. At the assembly before Christmas break there would always be a draw for trees, people, a big house and a little house. I would always buy tickets, and I never won a thing. However, when I was in Grade 5 myself, the whole class got to help make the gingerbread, and my mom helped out too. And she had the thought, to ask for the recipe! So now, I every Christmas I can buy the gingerbread that I could never manage to win!

Group 1:
1 cup margarine, butter or shortening, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup molasses
2 tbsp vinegar

Group 2:
5 cups flour
1 1/2 baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2-3 tsp ginger
1 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375. Mix group 1 together. Mix group 2 together. Add group 2 slowly to group 1 until well mixed. Form into a ball, or several smaller balls and chill for an hour or more. Roll out the dough and cut into the shapes you need. Bake for 10-15 minutes.

Usually, I make one batch and it is enough for the house that I am making plus a few extra animals, people, or Santa and some reindeer!

I had a hard time finding a royal icing recipe that didn't call for egg whites, because I'm a little nervous about eating egg whites that have been sitting out for several days. I eventually found this recipe which calls for meringue powder. Meringue powder is an egg white substitute that's a little pricey but great for when you don't want to eat raw egg whites.

3 tbsp meringue powder
4 cups icing sugar
6 tbsp cold water

Beat all ingredients together for 7-10 minutes until stiff peaks form. Keep the icing covered in a damp cloth while you are working with it, otherwise it will stiffen up and will be useless.

Jedi Mickey Cake

I made this cake yesterday for one of my good friends who loves both Star Wars and Disney.
Its Mickey Mouse as a Jedi!
With lightsabers around the edges of the cake.

Eclairs II

I made Eclairs again. And they were pretty much equally amazing as they were the first time. For the recipe and the story behind the first time I made them, the post is here.


Don't the look super duper tasty?That would be because they are!

Anyway, something I learned from the two times that I made them. The recipe that I have makes way too much filling. Unfortunately, it is a little hard to halve a packet of pudding mix. So I would suggest making two batches of the pastry and doubling the chocolate topping recipe. Also, try to put the chocolate on as fast as possible because the topping solidifies fairly quickly.