Believe it or not, I actually have a better reason than the usual, “Sorry, we’re busy” for not posting much lately. If you keep an eye on the flickr site, you might’ve noticed that food pictures have been appearing there but never migrating over to the site. Well, the reason is that I’ve had a side project going on — I’ve been making a cookbook! My good friend Jessica is getting married today, and as a wedding present for her, I gathered recipes from her friends and family and put them together in a cookbook that I had printed over at blurb.com. I didn’t have time to make everything myself, but we did test out and photograph some of the recipes, so those are what you may have seen show up on flickr. I wanted to share some of these delicious recipes with you, too, but I didn’t want to ruin the surprise for Jessica, who I think might read this here blog occasionally. But the beautiful wedding was yesterday today, so the cat’s finally out of the bag. The next several posts will be recipes shared by Jessica’s friends and family.

First up is this Irish cream poundcake from Katrin Baker, an advisor to both Jessica and me when we were in the Honors program at NCSU. I couldn’t resist adding some chopped chocolate to Katrin’s recipe, though I’m sure it would be delicious either way. As Katrin says, this cake actually gets better after it sits for a day or two. I especially liked it toasted. Thanks, Katrin!

Chocolate Chip Irish Cream Poundcake
adapted from Katrin Baker, originally from Cooking Light, she thinks

2 3/4 cups cake flour (about 11 ounces)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup low-fat or fat-free cream cheese, softened
10 tablespoons butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 large eggs
3/4 cup Irish cream liqueur
3/4 cup dark chocolate, chopped, or chocolate chip (optional)
Cooking spray
2 tablespoons powdered sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 325 F.

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.

Beat together cream cheese and butter with a mixer at high speed. Beat in granulated sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla. Add eggs, 1 at a time; beat well after each addition. Beat on high speed 1 minute.

With mixer on low, add flour mixture and liqueur alternately to sugar mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture; mixing well after each addition. Stir in chopped chocolate, if using.

Pour batter into a 12-cup Bundt pan coated with cooking spray.

Bake at 325 F for 55 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes on a wire rack; remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack. If desired, sift powdered sugar over cake.

For Mom’s birthday, I gave her a list of options of “celebration desserts” I’d been wanting to try, and she picked the hazelnut brown butter cake from Smitten Kitchen.  (I know, you’re probably starting to think that’s the only place I ever get ideas.  Maybe I have a little food crush?  I actually found this one via Not Derby Pie though.)  This cake was fantastic — nutty, dense and almost chewy but not too heavy, just sweet and rich enough.  I have to admit, I was worried this wasn’t going to be chocolatey enough for a birthday cake for Mom. (A couple years ago I made this torte, which is basically just chocolate, butter, and cream.  We could barely stick in the candles.)  But here, the layer of ganache, while thin, was dark and rich enough that it was just perfect.  And wait until you see what I did with the leftover hazelnuts, coming later this week!

I made caramelized hazelnuts to decorate the top, using instructions from Tartelette.  However, I thought some pictures were in order to better illustrate the technique, so I’ve detailed what I did after the jump.  If you want the recipe for the cake, I’ll send you over to the Smitten Kitchen.  By the way, the cake has very little flour in it, so I think it could probably be made gluten free pretty easily.

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Well, it’s time for another Daring Bakers adventure, and what fun this one was! This month’s challenge was hosted by Daring Baker co-founders Ivonne of Cream Puffs In Venice and Lis of La Mia Cucina, with help from Fran of Apples Peaches Pumpkin Pie and Shea of Whiskful. The challenge is dedicated to Barbara of winosandfoodies.com and the Taste of Yellow LiveSTRONG event. In addition to this challenge, this month was also exciting because it brought a new Daring Bakers’ website, including public baking forums which you, dear reader, should go check out.

But enough with the business. You want to hear about cake! This month’s challenge was an Opera Cake. Though Opera cakes are usually flavored with dark ingredients like coffee or chocolate, these Opera Cakes were to choose light spring colors and flavorings. I’d recently been remembering a delicious white chocolate, honey, and lavender terrine I had when Mom and I visited Provence, so I immediately decided those would be the flavors I would pick.

Since Matt was out of town on baking day, Mom came over to our apartment and made the cake with me. I was sure glad — we had a lot of fun, and nothing was that hard, but there were times it was busy and it was good to have two sets of hands. I have to say, I’m pretty proud of how this came out. Aside from not letting the ganache firm up enough so that the glaze melted it a little, the cake looks beautiful, and it tasted delicious as well. Maybe a tad on the sweet side, but what kind of a complaint is that?! I was particularly glad of how much the lavender flavor came out. I thought it might be too subtle, but instead it asserted its presence just enough. Thanks Ivonne, Lis, Fran, and Shea, for a fun and whimsical challenge! Be sure to check out all the other Opera Cakes with the DB blogroll!

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As you may already know from a previous post, Red Velvet Cake is by far my favorite type of cake. So when I saw these Red Velvet Cake Balls from Bakerella, I had to try them. Her original recipe calls for a red velvet cake mix and cream cheese frosting from a jar. I’m sure that would be a much easier way to make them, but I decided to make them from scratch. I think ready-made cream cheese frosting tastes a little funny, and making a cake doesn’t really take that much longer than using a box anyway. The down side of this, though, is that they need to be refrigerated because of the cream cheese. I brought these to choir rehearsal a few weeks ago, but when I was calling them Cake Balls, everyone thought they needed a more elegant name, so I’ve decided to call them Red Velvet Cake Truffles from now on. This is obviously a recipe you can do a lot of playing with depending on the occasion (for instance, Bakerella now has an adorable Cupcake Pops version), so you may be seeing more of these in the future!

Red Velvet Cake Truffles

Here’s the basics of what I did, adapted from Bakerella. Feel free to let your creativity shine!

1. Make a quarter sheet cake. (I used the Red Velvet Cake recipe you can find here, which will fit in a quarter sheet pan, though just barely.)
2. While it’s cooling, make some frosting. (I used this cream cheese frosting, but without the peppermint.)
3. When the cake is cool, crumble it up into a big bowl. Add enough frosting so it will hold together in balls (probably about 16 oz, the size of one can of frosting).
4. Roll into balls, or whatever shape you wish, and chill in the fridge or freezer until nice and firm.
5. Melt some chocolate or candy coatings according to the directions on the package for dipping. (If you’re using chocolate, you probably will need to add a little bit of oil to it when you’re melting it.)
6. Dip the truffles into the chocolate or candy. I did some dark chocolate and some white chocolate. I thought the dark chocolate tasted better, but the white was prettier and looked more like a traditional red velvet cake. You could also drizzle them afterward with a different kind of chocolate or color of candy, dip them into sprinkles or other toppings while the chocolate is still warm. The possibilities are endless!

I know, it’s the new year, and everyone’s got all kinds of resolutions to exercise and eat healthier, and the last thing you need is more pictures of delicious sweet things. So, I promise this is the last of the Christmas sweets. This is a traditional yeast bread/cake often made by Moravians, usually at Christmas time, but sometimes other times of the year as well. My mom grew up in the Moravian Church, but doesn’t remember making sugar cake herself until I was little and she made it for the Candle Tea (a kind of church bazaar at Christmastime) at Raleigh Moravian Church in North Carolina. She got the recipe there from Mae Marshall.

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