Wee Feast

I’d like to think one of my better traits is loyalty. I would also describe myself as constant. Even when I’m being spontaneous—up and quitting my job, for example—it’s not really a deviation from the norm. After the congratulations, I usually also got an “I’m not surprised.”

One of those constancy traits that shows up is when I find a cook or baker whose work I admire, I keep following his or her recipes until the cows come home. So it goes with a small handful in my recent cooking and baking past: Deborah Madison, Dorie Greenspan, Ina Garten, Deb from Smitten Kitchen. Today is another Smitten Kitchen recipe. Even though my mom is always, “You got a recipe online?” they tend to turn out supremely awesome.

That was a long and complicated back story just to say, I hope you’re not bored with my recipes yet.

Read more…?

I just had a birthday recently. And yes, I made my own cake. It was a lovely day.

When I was tiny, my cafeteria used to serve yellow cake with chocolate icing once every couple of weeks as the dessert portion of the meal tray. Yellow cake with chocolate icing became an instant favorite.

I used Smitten Kitchen’s Best Birthday Cake recipe, and it was amazingly delicious. I even called up more than one person as I was mixing the batter (by hand…for the last time…that’s right, I got a Kitchen Aid mixer as a present) to remark on how perfect it was. “It’s like a pound cake, with a tight crumb and a nice density. But it’s really fluffy too!” After I bored friends far and wide with the batter, it was on to the frosting. I liked the sour cream frosting, but I think I will stick to buttercream in the future. It gives it that diner cake flavor that I particularly enjoy.

Here’s one of the cake layers cooling:

And the finished product, in all of its frosted, sprinkled glory:

Now I’m dying to know: what is your favorite birthday cake?