Red White and Blue Cake

Happy Early Birthday America! I know your birthday is still a couple days away, but I couldn’t wait to celebrate. What are you now, 235? You don’t look a day over 200. I hear you’re throwing some pretty big birthday parties all weekend. Sorry I can’t come. I’ve gotta work the whole weekend. But I did bake you something, cause what’s a birthday without cake! I made it with your favorite colors. I hope you like it! Have a great birthday weekend!

I waivered a lot making this cake. It was initially supposed to be a red and blue velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. Then I changed my mind and decided to go with a vanilla cake instead. Then changed my mind about the frosting and decided to do a buttercream. While I was baking, I thought I’d make it a 3 layer cake, but after seeing how tall each layer was, opted for just 2 layers. I thought about covering it in fondant, then changed my mind again and stuck with fondant decorations instead. I’m surprised the cake turned out anything like what I had originally envisioned with the amount of times I changed my mind!

But I’m kind of proud of myself. I actually made this entire cake without screaming at it even once! Normally I would yell, “THIS IS WHY I DON’T MAKE CAKE!!” at least once every hour or so, but this one—nothing! It wasn’t a total breeze (is any cake a total breeze?), but it also wasn’t too hard either. I absolutely love the way it turned out. 2 layers of moist vanilla cake, smothered in a light lemon swiss meringue buttercream. And I actually managed to frost the cake so that it didn’t look like a kindergartener attempted it! (There was one minor mishap with a decorating comb thing that ended up scraping most of my frosting back off.. but after 10 minutes of smoothing, I managed to fix it. I have to remember next time to just leave. it. alone. )

And the taste? Total yum! I’m not really a cake person. Even if it’s exactly the same flavor, I’ll always pick a cupcake over having to slice a cake. But this one? I’d totally eat by the slice. The cake is moist and fluffy, and the buttercream is a light delicate flavor that doesn’t overwhelm your tastebuds. They’re a perfect combination. And the cake is darn pretty too. White on the outside, but bold and vibrant on the inside. And it slices like a DREAM! I’ve never had a cake that cut so perfectly. It’s just right for a 4th of July celebration! But beware. It’ll go quick. I hesitated bringing a cake into work, because while they snatch up cookies and cupcakes, there’s usually cake left over at the end of the night. This cake? It lasted 2 hours. And there were people that didn’t even get to try it! I’ll call that a winner.

Happy Birthday America!

Firework Sugar Cookies

Why do magazines remind you that your subscription is expiring, SEVEN months before it actually does? I started getting renewal notifications attached to my Martha Stewart Living back in December, even though I had my subscription through June. Irked that Martha was possibly trying to weasel more money out of me, I ignored them. And ignored them. And ignored them. I knew when my subscription was up! I didn’t need a bold red “LAST CHANCE” stamped onto my magazine to remind me. Well. Maybe I did. Because once June rolled around, I completely forgot to actually renew. No new Martha waiting in the mailbox for me this month. And of course, this would be the month that I absolutely fall in love with what’s on the cover and want to make it immediately.

As soon as I saw the new issue sitting on the newsstand at work, I knew I had to make the firework cookies! A chance to play around with royal icing, try a new cutout cookie recipe, and make a festive 4th of July treat? Yes, please! Plus, they’d be the perfect cookies to share with my coworkers, who have been lamenting that I’ve neglected them lately by not bringing anything in.

They ended up being really easy to make, and tasted pretty good too. The cookie dough was softer than my normal cut out cookie dough, but ended up cutting out just as well, and stayed softer after baking too. I’ll have to try it again with shapes other than circles to see if it holds the shapes as well as the other too—I might be making a switch! And the royal icing is actually a lot easier than it looks!

Pipe the background color of royal icing onto the cookie. Outline around the cookie, making sure your icing is thick enough to hold a line, otherwise it’ll run off the edges into a puddle. (My icing was a bit on the thin side this time and that happened more than once to me. Oops!) Then fill in the center part of the cookie. (For a great video on not only outlining and filling, but icing consistency and marbling, check out Sweetopia.)

While the background color is still wet, pipe circles onto the cookie with the other colors. They should sink into the background color. (Give it a little shake back and forth to help it along if they don’t sink right away.)

Drag a skewer or a toothpick through the wet icing to marble. For this cookie, I went in opposite directions, dragging my skewer up from the center, then moving it over a bit and dragging it back down again.

Continue around the cookie until it’s completely done, and there you have it—a pretty Firework!

Mine aren’t nearly as perfect and pretty as Martha’s but I still love them! And they’re probably the only fireworks I’ll get this year, since I have to work the whole weekend up to the 4th. Hope everyone else has a great holiday weekend though!

Red White and Blue Shortcakes

Growing up, and still to this day, my mom always made Strawberry Shortcakes with those prepackaged store-bought cakes. You know—the ones they stack right next to the display of strawberries. Those unnaturally golden sponges so laden with preservatives they could survive a nuclear holocaust. Essentially Twinkies without the cream filling. Well, these shortcakes here aren’t my mom’s Strawberry Shortcakes. These are the real thing. The way a Strawberry Shortcake should be. A baking powder biscuit, tangy with buttermilk, sweetened with a little bit of sugar, and laced with a bright pop of lemon zest throughout. It’s the perfect vessel to soak up all the delicious sweet juice of the berry mixture. It practically screams light summertime dessert. (Light in essence. Not necessarily in calories.)

Brown Sugar Pound Cake

Brown Sugar Pound Cake
From Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook
Makes two 8 1/2-by-4 1/2 inch loaves (I halved the recipe to make 1 loaf)

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pans
3 cups sifted all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 cups packed light brown sugar
5 large eggs
3/4 cup buttermilk

1. Preheat oven to 325F. Butter two 8 1/2-by-4 1/2 inch loaf pans; set aside. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside.

2. In the bowl of an electric mixer with the paddle attachment, beat butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Add eggs one at a time beating until combined.

3. Add the reserved flour mixture in three batches, alternating with the buttermilk and beginning and ending with the flour; beat until combined. Divide the batter between the prepared pans, and smooth with an offset spatula.

4. Bake, rotating pans halfway through, until cakes are golden brown and a cake tester inserted in the centers come out clean, about 1 hour. Transfer pans to a wire rack to cool 10 minutes. Turn out cakes onto the rack to cool completely. Cakes can be kept at room temperature, wrapped well in plastic, for up to 3 days.

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Happy Kind-of Belated Birthday America! (Hey, it's still technically the birthday weekend so it's not totally belated yet.) This weekend, from coast to coast, and sea to shining sea, we collectively fired up our grills to do some outdoor dining. We stuffed ourselves full of hamburgers and hot dogs, baked beans and potato salad. But what about dessert? Apple Pie is an All-American classic, but what about when we gather, at dusk, on blankets to watch the skies light up in a rainbow of colors? Pie doesn't travel quite so well. I need something sturdy enough to take on a picnic, but great enough to be the star of the afternoon cookout too. I need Pound Cake.

I've been feeling a bit uninspired lately. I'm currently without a computer, (let's just say the cat made his feelings known about how much time I was spending online...) and my lack of internet access means a lack of blog browsing for inspiration. With the holidays approaching, I knew I wanted to make something sort of festive, but I had no idea what. Usually, that's when I turn to you guys and your amazing blogs for ideas, but without them, I was stuck with only cookbooks. I didn't feel up to my sugar cookies (I'll have enough of that at the end of this month... you'll see!), and with 2 cupcake recipes to make for an event at work over the weekend (more on this later too!), I didn't really want to make cupcakes either. I was down to the last bit of time to bake before the weekend, and I was running dangerously low on options. Finally, flipping through my Martha Baking Handbook, I came across a recipe for Brown Sugar Pound Cake. With only a little more than a handful of ingredients and a bit of time, it was simple and absolutely perfect for my uninspired mind.

Not overly sweet, the pound cake is perfect to serve at a backyard barbecue, sliced up and topped with whipped cream and some fresh summer berries. Leave it plain and wrap it up, and you've got a perfect portable sweet treat for a picnic! I sliced mine into thick pieces and packed it in my bag to take with me downtown to the annual Red, White, and Boom fireworks on Friday night. We got there early to stake out our spot, and had about 3 hours to kill before it got dark. Unfortunately, I was so full of free hot dogs and funnel cakes that I didn't really get to eat much else while we waited. (The 2nd funnel cake was a bit more than I could handle, but who could turn down a free funnel cake? Certainly not me. Gotta love knowing people that work in the food booths!) I guess it's a good thing I had about 2 pieces of cake before we left! (Hey. It was good. Don't judge my overindulgence.) The fireworks were great! The waiting 40 minutes in the parking garage to go home wasn't. But I had fun anyway!

Pound cake is the perfect dessert for the perfect summer day, so try it out next time you're headed to the park or the lake (or the ocean for some of you lucky people). Go ahead and unwrap a slice for a quick bite while you're hiking. Who needs that boring trail mix or granola bar when you can have cake! You'll probably have to wait until next year to enjoy it under fireworks, but there's still plenty of time to have a midnight snack under the stars! So what are you waiting for?