Meyer Lemon Curd Cake

This is not the prettiest cake, I know this. BUT trust me when I say, it is totally and completely worth making. The cake batter part is rich and vanilla-y, which goes really well with the lemon curd. And when baked, the lemon curd gets a lemon bar type consistency. SO good. I'm pretty sure I ate most of it myself. My family aren't huge lemon fans so whenever I end up making lemon things, I eat the majority of it myself (over a period of time of course). I have been known to eat an entire (large) pan of lemon bars by myself in two days... yeah, not a good life choice...
But this cake is one that I definitely do not mind eating all by myself, it's just that delicious. Also, it's totally easy to put together. It'd be delicious with other kinds of curd too of course. I'd like to try it with raspberry curd next.
So while this cake may not be the one you pull out to show off when guests come over, it is definitely a good cake to make for a night in, or a lazy weekend breakfast. Trust me, totally worth making. Don't judge a book by it's cover and all that jazz. Also, it's from Heidi at 101 Cookbooks and I'm pretty sure she's incapable of creating something that isn't totally delicious.
You can use store-bought lemon curd, but it's probably cheaper and way more fun/delicious to make it yourself. It may seem like a scary thing to make, but trust me, it's totally easy!

Lemon Curd Cake
Adapted from 101 Cookbooks
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup lemon curd
Sugar in the raw for the top (optional but definitely adds a good texture and flavor)

Preheat oven to 350, butter a 9" pan. Set aside
Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl and set aside.
In the bowl of a mixer, cream together butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add in eggs one at a time, then beat in vanilla.
Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients all at once and fold in to combine. Do not over-mix.
Pour half the batter into the pan, and using about half of the curd, drop spoonfuls over the batter. Pour the rest of the batter in. It's a thick batter so it's not going to smooth over the curd well, that's okay though. Do your best to get it over, then put the remaining curd on top of the batter. Take a butter knife and swirl the curd and batter just slightly, being careful not to get the curd too close to the sides of the pan (it will stick and be pretty messy after baking). Sprinkle sugar in the raw on top. Bake 32-34 minutes.

Meyer Lemon Curd

Do you ever have specific words that gross you out? I never notice words that I don't like unless one of my sister's or my mother point out words that gross them out. Apparently, a gross word is "curd". You'd think that being 17, my sister would at least try it. Nope! She will have none of it, and neither will my boyfriend. Seventeen and nineteen years old and they refuse to try something because the name is gross... people are strange sometimes :P
But! Don't let the fact that this is called curd get to you. It's totally fabulous and delicious and SO easy to make. Super easy. I have to find more things to do with it, I swirled it into a cake (recipe to come!) and it was glorious. Going to put it on some pancakes later... yuuuum...

Meyer Lemon Curd
FromConfections of a Foodie Bride
1/2 cup Meyer lemon juice (about 4-5 lemons)
1 Tbsp lemon zest
2 eggs
1/3 cup sugar
1 stick butter, cut into 4 pieces

Whisk together lemon juice, zest, sugar, and eggs in a bowl placed over a simmering pot of water. Whisk until warm and then add in butter one piece at a time until melted. Whisk constantly until thickened and smooth, will be about 165 degrees on a candy thermometer.
Pour through a strainer. Use or store in fridge with plastic wrap over the top of the curd (this prevents it from getting a "skin" like puddings do).

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

I make pound cake wayyy too much... it's just so easy and there's something awesome about creaming together massive amounts of butter, cream cheese, and sugar. Especially after getting my absolutely fantastic Kitchenaid stand mixer for Christmas... seriously, I'm pretty sure I'm in love with it. I used to think that maybe they weren't THAT great, and then I got one. Probably one of the best things ever. I just left the cream cheese, butter, and sugar in the mixer to cream while I made dinner. Aaaaamazing.
But I'll stop talking about my mad crazy love for my mixer and tell you about this recipe. Totally and completely delicious, and very easy. One of my sister's says it tastes like cheesecake with a different texture. Anything even slightly cheesecake-y and I'm pretty sure its a great idea.
If you're not a huge fan of cream cheese pound cake, this is a wonderful recipe for normal pound cake, and also one that I use on a regular basis.

Cream Cheese Pound Cake
Adapted from My Baking Addiction
Makes one bundt cake

1 1/2 cups butter, room temperature
8 oz cream cheese, room temperature
3 cups sugar
6 eggs
1 tbs vanilla extract
3 cups flour

Preheat oven to 325, grease a bundt cake pan. Set aside.
In a mixing bowl, beat together butter and cream cheese until smooth. Add in sugar and beat until light and fluffy, at least 5 minutes. Add in eggs two at a time and beat to incorporate. Beat in vanilla.
Add flour and mix until fully combined.
Pour into bundt pan and bake about an hour, rotating pan once.
Let cool in pan for about 20 minutes before removing to cool on wire rack completely.

Giant Malted Oreos

When I bake, I like to plan what I'm going to bake way before I actually bake it. I'm not sure why I do this, because I change my mind about 50 times before I come to a final decision. I'll be all set to bake whatever I decided on, and then change my mind to something completely different. So it's pretty pointless to attempt to plan anything to bake, but I do it anyway. Sometimes planning is most of the fun.
I've wanted to make this recipe for a while and I'm SO glad I finally got around to it. It's totally delicious and not at all hard. It did take me a while to make because I'm ridiculously slow the first time I try a recipe, but for most people this shouldn't take long at all :P
School starts tomorrow for me so posting may slow down a bit, but I am definitely planning to still update at least once a week, preferably two to three times a week, depending on how much I actually bake.

Well, as I have about a million things to do to get ready for school before I go into work, this is a short post. Hope you enjoy the recipe!

Giant Malted Oreos
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen
Not sure how many this makes, as a lot got eaten before I could count but I doubled her recipe and (accidentally) made my cookies bigger than actual oreos so I'd say about 40 sandwich cookies. Definitely half this if you won't eat them all, but I plan to give some away if I actually have any left.
Also, if you want bigger cookies, use two teaspoons worth of dough. Make sure you give a bit of room between them on the baking sheet, they spread.

Cookies:
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup malted milk powder
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup light brown sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 1/4 cups butter (2 1/2 sticks)
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 375 and line baking sheets with parchment paper.
Whisk together flour, cocoa powder, malt, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Add in butter and eggs and beat on low speed. You may have to use your hands to get this dough to come together.
Drop rounded teaspoonfuls (that's a word now, if it wasn't before) onto baking sheets and press down slightly, bake about 8-9 minutes. Let cool on baking sheets for about 5 minutes before transferring to wire racks.

Filling:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
4 cups powdered sugar
1 Tbs vanilla extract
one vanilla bean, scraped

Beat together butter and shortening until smooth, then add in sugar and beat until creamy. Beat in vanilla and vanilla bean until fully incorporated.

Using a pastry bag or a freezer bag with the corner snipped off, fill cookies.

Chewy Sugar Cookies

When I was little, the best part of going to the grocery store was the sugar cookies you get when you go to the deli. No chocolate chip cookies for me, no way. Vanilla was the way to go. They were always the best, always soft and chewy, never crunchy. Crunchy cookies were (and still are) gross when I was 5, so grocery store cookies were the best.
What is it about children and less than awesome taste in food? Thank goodness it's something you grow out of. Or at least it is for some people... my boyfriend had Eggo Waffles with maple syrup, whipped cream, and chocolate milk for dinner. Some people don't outgrow the gross phase... But anyway! While I outgrew the stale grocery store cookie phase, I still love sugar cookies. These were almost like a mix between sugar cookie and a shortbread cookie. The outside was buttery and slightly crisp, but the inside was soft and chewy. They're very vanilla-y and super delicious. You also can leave the dough in the fridge overnight, too.

Vanilla Sugar Cookies
from Joy the Baker

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup granulated sugar, plus more for tops
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

Beat butter till smooth, then add in oil. Beat a bit, although it may not fully incorporate. Add in sugars, egg, and vanilla, beat until smooth.

Stir in dry ingredients all at once until fully incorporated. Refridgerate for at least an hour until firmer and easier to handle.

Preheat oven to 350, and line sheets with parchment paper.


Drop tablespoonfuls (is that a word? maybe not...) onto cookie sheets, flatten slightly, and sprinkle liberally with sugar. Bake about 10 minutes until edges are just slightly browned. Cool on cookie sheets for about 5 minutes before cooling the rest of the way on wire racks.

Pumpkin Bread with Chocolate Chips and Millet

I am a little bit obsessed with pumpkin... okay maybe a lot obsessed. Pumpkin puree starts out looking kind of gross and like carrot baby food, but baked into things, it's amazing. Pumpkin bread is definitely my favorite way to eat it. It's delicious without anything in it, but adding in chocolate chips and millet makes it even better.
This bread is super moist, as most pumpkin bread, and the spices are great. Chocolate chips and millet make it even better. Millet is a strange but delicious thing. It's in bird seed, but is a common grain in other countries. Super delicious and crunchy, so don't be weirded out over it!

These loaves also freeze very well, so you don't have to eat it all at once.

Pumpkin Bread with Chocolate Chips and Millet
Adapted from Joy the Baker inspired by this recipe.
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup milk
1 15 oz can of pumpkin puree
1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 1/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup flax seed meal
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 cup raw millet
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Raw sugar for sprinkling

Grease two loaf pans and preheat oven to 350.

Whisk together butter, oil, sugar, and eggs. Add in vanilla, milk, and pumpkin. Whisk or beat well until fully combined. Set aside.

In a separate bowl, whisk together flours, flax meal, salt, baking soda, and spices. Stir in millet. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in wet ingredients. Fold together, then fold in chocolate chips. Pour into to loaf pans and pour raw sugar liberally over the top. Bake about 1 hour, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool in pans for about 15 minutes before removing from pans and cooling completely on wire racks.

Malted Mint Chocolate Cookies

When I was about 13 my best friend lived right down the street from Pitt Street Pharmacy, a retro-style pharmacy/diner. Whenever we'd ride our bikes down there, she'd get a chocolate shake and I'd get a mint chocolate chip malt. Sounds weird but is absolutely delicious!
I got some mint chocolate chunks on sale a couple weeks ago and decided I needed to use them in this recipe, as well as add some malt. The cookie is delicious and fudgy and I will definitely be making them again soon!
I got these on sale because the main grocery store that I shop at only has them seasonally, but I believe Wal-Mart has them year round.

Malted Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies
adapted from Annie's Eats

1/2 cup butter, cold and cut in chunks
1 1/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup dark cocoa powder
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup malted milk powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups mint chocolate chunks

Preheat oven to 350 and line baking sheets with parchment paper.
Whisk together flour, malt, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.
Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy, about 5 minutes. Beat in eggs one at a time, then beat in vanilla. Mix in cocoa powder. With mixer on low, beat in flour mixture until just combined, then stir in chocolate chunks.
Drop rounded tablespoon amount onto cookie sheets, and bake 9-10 minutes, until edges are set. Cool on cookie sheets for 5 minutes before transferring to wire racks.

Makes about 56 small cookies.