TWD - Gingerbread Baby Cakes

Holy black pepper! These cakes are like crack! Have you ever had crack? Well I haven't, but I understand it's really addicting, so I believe these cakes should be called crack cakes. That is how good they are.

I love crack...cakes!

Crack cakes have a cute little wrapper.

I've seen too many recipes, had too many desserts that fall short of the punch. When you say you are a lemon tart, please, please taste like lemon and have a little kick. If you are going to claim to have some ginger in you, then I better feel like I'm on Gilligan's Island!

These little lovelies, they do the trick. There's powdered ginger, fresh ginger and (wait for it) black pepper!

I am going to be putting black pepper in a few more sweet dishes from now on.

You all would be proud of me too, I only changed up the recipe a smidge and that was on the recommendation of the many other TWD'ers. There was much chatter about the molasses being overwhelming and this recipe called for 2 cups. That is a lot. So I subbed half the molasses with corn syrup and I believe that was the right call, it allowed the other flavors to come through nicely.

Oh and the texture of these genius bombs are somewhat like a brownie...isn't that crazy?

A ginger brownie.

It's a little christmas miracle.

Crack cakes also come in snowflake shapes.

Karen's Kichen Stories is this week's host. She has some nice pictures. Staging and all, I have my cooling rack that appears in 99.9% of my pictures. It's a nice rack though.

TWD - Sugar Plum Chiffon Cake

Sugar plums are dancing in my head. They are kind of like the dancing hippos in Fantasia. Round with little tutus. The plums don't have faces (makes it easier to eat) and they just twirl and twirl. There might be something wrong with me.

Moving on...

Sugar plums are dancing in your head now.

So the cake for this TWD installment was supposed to be a Nectarine Upside-Down Chiffon Cake with a streusel layer made up of almonds, oats and brown sugar. I strayed a bit. I did what I promised and followed the recipe exactly for the last TWD, so now I have given myself carte blanche. I had been baking with peaches/nectarines a lot lately and were a bit tired of them. And then I started having the sugar plum dreams and what could I do? Sugar plum cake! I just traded out the brown sugar and nectarines for white sugar and some large black plums. I left out the struesel layer because it didn't sound like it fit. Others posted that they weren't very enamored with it either.

Dollops of happiness.

I've also been making mascarpone and added a little dollop of mascarpone icing to each slice. It's good. I ate it for breakfast. Not the whole thing, just a slice. But if I were actually in my dream...I'd eat the whole thing and follow it up with some bacon. Why not, I'm getting exercise chasing the sugar plums so I can make another cake. It all works out. Oh ya, in my dreams my skinny jeans fit too. Stupid person for inventing skinny jeans.

I think I just saw a plum roll by on a bicycle outside my window.

I think my jeans are too tight...and they aren't even skinny.


I hope this week's host's jeans are tight too. I don't think they properly enjoyed the cake if they aren't.

The Little French Bakery http://littlefrenchbakery.com/nectarine-upside-down-chiffon-cake/

The Double Trouble Kitchen http://thedoubletroublekitchen.com/2012/09/04/twd-nectarine-upside-down-chiffon-cake/


Here's a picture of a cake I did the other day. Since my last post didn't have any pictures, I thought I would up the picture quota.

Vanilla buttermilk cake with caramelized peaches and mascarpone icing.