Carrot cake is one of my all-time favorite cakes. But somehow I go months, sometimes even years without making it! Italian cream cake is another one of those that happens too. Definitely a favorite, but I never think to make it.

In my latest Better Homes magazine a gorgeous carrot cake graced the cover. And it even had a little twist added in.

Mango juice.

Umm yum. Mangoes are one of my favorite summer time fruits. They are fantastic to eat on their own, but also make the perfect addition to all types of salsa, potato salads, etc. Turns out, they also make a fabulous addition to carrot cake.

Somehow I was able to refrain from smothering this cake in cream cheese icing, and just did a light layer on top and in between the two cakes.   I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but it was a really good decision.

It let the carrot cake shine.

Now don’t go expecting a light and fluffy cake with this recipe. It is dense. Gloriously dense.

Make it soon!

We live in the heart of downtown, so unfortunately my dogs do not have a nice grassy back yard to run on. What they do have is a long paved alley way behind my garage where the neighbors and I like to have our “block parties.”

Aren’t they sweet? Suzie (aka Snootie) is the black lab and Lizzie is the little red spaniel. When Lizzie gets running fast she actually resembles a rabbit. It is hilarious. Suzie will do pretty much anything for the orange decoy. Her world revolves around it.

Ok, now on to the promised no fail pumpkin cheesecake.

I promise this is one of the best pumpkin cheesecakes you will ever have. Not only does it taste delicious, but it is really pretty easy to put together. And the top barely cracks. I’m not sure why, but now is not the time to start questioning it.

Pumpkin cheesecake was the cake of choice for office birthday’s this month.  I made it two years ago for the office and it was a favorite, so it was about time it made its return. Once again, it proved to be a winner.

First things first, lets start off with the crust. Instead of your typical graham cracker crust, you are going to want to upgrade this to a ginger snap crust. It makes all the difference in the world.

Delicious hardly describes it. Try to keep yourself from eating it all before you bake it. The amount of will power required for that is incredible. If you are like me, just plan on making a little bit extra. And whatever leftover you have you can press up the sides of your springform pan, creating a bit of a side crust as well.

It really is the perfect cheesecake. I am so glad that I printed out this recipe years ago because I have made it every year since then. Baking cheesecakes used to really scare me. It just seemed like they were quite a bit of work for something that was always kind of bleh. But, not this cheesecake. While it does require a little more effort, it is very simple. And even people who claim to not like cheesecake will like it. Trust me, I know. I’m one of those people, and I can’t seem to keep myself from eating this one.

If you are hosting a little Halloween gathering, this would be perfect. Or earmark it for your Thanksgiving meal. Sure it isn’t as traditional as a pumpkin pie, but I think your family will thank you for the new addition.  And if they are resistant to change, then go ahead and make a pumpkin pie and save this one for yourself!

Bridal pictures were taken and his wedding band was ordered. It is hard to believe that in exactly two months that wedding band will be finding itself a permanent home on Wes’ ring finger!

I also learned this weekend that if my dream food career never takes off and I suddenly start to suck at being a CPA, I might be able to make it as a wedding bouquet designer.

With all the travelling and other wedding related activities on my mind, I completely forgot about asking my florist to provide a bouquet for my bridal shots. Honestly the florals for the bridal shoot were the absolute last thing on my mind.  Instead of getting all worked up about not having one, I decided to try making my own. Surprisingly easy.

Sure it isn’t super professional, but it matches my color scheme, has two of my favorite flowers in it (garden roses and hydrangeas), photographed beautifully, and most importantly, was under $40 to make.  That’s a win in my book.

Forget peonies, garden roses have officially won my heart. I just want to crawl up into all those layers and take a nap.

I realize that sounds incredibly weird, but today is an over-share kind of day.

On a completely different note, I feel like I have to make mention of how incredible Nordstroms is. It has always been my go-to department store, but after this experience, they rank among garden roses in terms of my love. Last week, my absolute favorite pair of shoes split in half. The platform literally snapped. It was terribly upsetting. What initially started as my attempt to re-purchase the shoes from Nordstroms, turned into them completely refunding my money from the original purchase three years ago.

Now, I know most people will tell you that having a Nordstroms credit card is a no-no. We all learned that lesson from Miss Rebecca Bloomwood in Confessions. I suppose I can see where it might be a problem, especially if you are one to put off paying your bills. However, if used responsibly, a Nordstroms credit card is essential. I will always use my Nordstroms card when shopping there in the future. The sales clerk who was assisting me was able to look up the original purchase of the shoes three years ago and refunded 100% of the purchase price.  Their return policy is fantastic. Other stores should take a lesson from the way Nordstroms handles their customers.

End Norstroms sales pitch.

And finally, I tried out a new carrot cake recipe this weekend. I’ve always loved my original carrot cake. It is moist, full of flavor, and always a hit with friends and family. Sadly, it is terribly unhealthy. I’m talking really, really bad for you.   Since I’ve been making a slight (and I mean very slight) effort to not eat as much sugar/desserts, I decided to re-invent my old recipe.

Like a lot of the dessert recipes I’ve posted recently, I subbed out the oil for applesauce, cut the sugar in half, and used other fruits to help keep it moist.  While this cake didn’t turn out quite as good as the original, I actually liked it better because it still tasted great and resulted in very little guilt.

The cream cheese glaze is practically see through. Obviously it is light.

You could even opt to completely omit the cream cheese glaze. The cake has enough flavor on its own. I just really, really wanted cream cheese icing. It has been way too long since I’ve had any.

This will be another cake that goes into my fall recipe rotation.

There are two ripe bananas in the recipe, but I promise you can’t even taste them. Or at least I can’t. I also happen to really like the way bananas taste, so maybe don’t take my word on that.

I’ll consult with a few of my taste testers and get their opinion.

Have a great week!

Rarely do I turn to the newspaper when recipe hunting. 95% of the time I turn to my favorite blogs or cooking websites. After making this discovery yesterday though, I am going to make sure to check back more often.

I had the urge to bake last night and an apple tea cake seemed to fit the bill.

This cake offers the perfect hint of Autumn, but isn’t too heavy to eat during the warm summery days we are still experiencing.  I guess I just wasn’t quite ready to break out the pastry dough and sweet potato yet. Give me a few more weeks for that.

You can opt to serve the cake un-iced, which is definitely nice.

But why not go all-out and add the apple glaze? It really is quite divine. Plus it is really fun to drizzle the glaze all over the cake, readily available fruit, your fingers… you get the idea.

This is another one of those things I’ve made that I’m not necessarily sure whether it fits in the breakfast or dessert category. Why not eat it for both?

I cut back quite a bit on the sugar in the original recipe, and completely subbed out the oil for applesauce, so it can’t be all that bad for you. Right? Just ignore all the sugar in the glaze. It’s a topping so it doesn’t count. At least that is what I told myself while I was repeatedly taste testing it for quality.

Please let me continue on in my naive little bubble.

]]> http://www.pardonthedoghair.com/2012/09/hello-autumn/feed/ 0 http://www.pardonthedoghair.com/2012/07/almost-there/ http://www.pardonthedoghair.com/2012/07/almost-there/#comments Mon, 02 Jul 2012 01:35:26 +0000 Lindsey http://www.pardonthedoghair.com/?p=1269 This has been a wild weekend for the blog. On Friday, I went ahead and pushed the button to move everything off of blogger and over here to wordpress. Hopefully you are seeing an updated version of my site and not the old blogger site. If you are, then success!

And if you aren’t, please don’t tell me. I’m not sure I can handle anymore computer talk for the next few days.

So I apologize for the lack of posting. My main focus has basically been just getting this page up and running. As you can see, there are still lots of little things that need to be tweaked and I’ll be adding to the site over the next few weeks, but for right now, I think I have a pretty good shell. Let me know what you think of the new design!

For June birthday’s at work, I decided to give the snicker’s ice-box cake a try a try. But, don’t let the fact that it is a no cook cake fool you. In my opinion, it is 100% easier to make a regular cake, as opposed to this one. And while the final product was absolutely delicious and yes, it was probably worth making homemade caramel as opposed to store bought, I can honestly tell you that it will be a long time before I make this one again.

I do absolutely love how the layers turned out. And after a day or two, it starts to taste like snicker’s tiramisu, which trust me, is not a bad thing.

Not a bad thing at all.

Oh and remember how I mentioned homemade caramel? Check out that lovely chunk of it right there….

Here you go, a closer look. Just in case that last picture didn’t show it off enough. The homemade caramel really was worth it. Although I absolutely suggest using a candy thermometer to help you and not follow the instructions at all in the link provided. Caramel making takes a little more work than what the other recipe suggests, unless I am just completely inept. Which honestly wouldn’t be that much of a surprise; I was ready to toss the whole project several times during the making of this thing.

But like I said, the end result was so worth it.  My co-workers made a point to tell me how much they enjoyed it, which of course makes the whole ordeal worthwhile.

It really is so pretty once it is all frozen, cut, and plated.

But don’t let these pictures fool you… there was definitely chocolate all over me, my appliances, and my camera when I got done photographing this.  And at one point, the other half of the snicker’s cake looked like this:

Regardless of how it looked, it still tasted great! If I were you, I would send the recipe to your favorite little determined baker and ask them to make it for you.

Thanks for hanging in there with all of the blog changes. I’m still trying to get everything all figured out, and I know a lot of my old posts still aren’t quite working, but I promise to have all of that fixed within the next week.  Once everything is totally complete, I’ll share all the info on how I switched from blogger to wordpress.  It can be daunting, but from what I’ve heard, is totally worth it.

Hope you had a fantastic weekend!

Lesson learned.

Do not deviate from your plans because you run the risk of being pelted by golf ball/tennis ball size hail while also causing thousands of dollars of damage to your car.

The storm blew in very quickly while I was at a CG workout and actually started dropping large pieces of hail long before the rain came.  After what seemed like a few isolated hail drops, it was determined that the storm was probably nearly over. Unfortunately that determination was slightly off-base. About 5 minutes later, the sky let loose dropping buckets of hail. Luckily for me, I had my thick workout mat with me and was able to sprint to my car using it as a hail guard.  After a few minutes of panicked driving, I found shelter underneath a church overhang.

I have never in my life seen hail like this in person and know that I am very, very lucky to not have been injured. Somehow my windshields did not break, thank heavens! And while I was quite angry last night because of the state of my car, deep down I knew there were many others who suffered much more damage that I did.

Thankfully I had this lovely chocolate peanut butter sheet cake to comfort me.

And comfort me it did.  Probably a little too much comfort actually, hence its relocation to my office today.

Chocolate sheet cakes are one of my absolute favorite desserts. Peanut butter is one of my absolute favorite snacks. Combine the two and you get my new favorite snack-time dessert.  See how I did that?

I’m pretty crafty.

Ok not really, but at least I try.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Sheet Cake

For the cake
1 cup butter
3/4 cup peanut butter
3 tbsp cocoa powder
1 cup water
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups sugar
2 cups flour
2 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup buttermilk

For the Icing
1/2 cup butter
3 tbsp cocoa powder
1/2 cup peanut butter
5 tbsp half & half
3 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup pecans, chopped

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spray a non-stick sheet pan.

In a medium sized sauce pan over medium heat, combine butter, peanut butter, cocoa powder, water, and vanilla. Stir together and bring to a boil.

While this is cooking, combine flour, sugar, eggs, salt, and baking soda in the bowl of a stand mixer. Blend together.  Gradually add in buttermilk. Mix together.

Once the stove top mixture is boiling, pour it into the flour mixture. Blend together for about two minutes.

Pour batter into the prepared sheet pan. Bake for 20 minutes.

While cake is baking, prepare the icing. Using the same saucepan from earlier, melt butter and peanut butter over medium heat. Stir in cocoa powder, half & half, and powdered sugar.  Whisk until combined. Remove from heat and add vanilla. Stir in pecans if you are using them.

Pour icing over the cake while it is still warm.

If this does not become one of your favorite cakes instantly, then there is probably something wrong with you.

Alright, I’m sorry, just kidding. That was a tad harsh. But, the cake is really yummy and makes for the perfect birthday cake. Treat yourself sometime soon, whether it is your birthday or not!  Like I said, it makes for the perfect comfort cake.

I’ve been known to hit the ball in all directions but straight.

Luckily, Friday was a lot of fun and no one was injured.  We were playing a scramble and some of my shots were actually used. I was thrilled! The rest of the weekend flew by.  Between trying a new church, trips to the farmer’s market, running, entertaining the dogs, and hanging out around town, Wes and I were ready to relax tonight.

I’ve got a fun recipe to share with you later in the week. We tried cooking two different types of fish “en papillote” this evening. Sounds fancy huh? It really just means in parchment paper. More on that later in the week.

So, some of you may know that my family is Canadian. And although Canada isn’t quite England, my family still really relates to a lot of the English traditions and expressions. Earlier when I was talking to my Mom (or should I say Mum), she couldn’t believe that we were not watching the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. In our defense, we were on our way to church and I hadn’t turned on the television all morning. To honor the Queen’s 60 years as Monarch, I decided sugar tea cakes were absolutely necessary. This was also my third attempt to recreate the sugar cookie cake that I just can’t stop talking about.

Sugar Cookie Cake, Round 3
Inspired by the Lofthouse sugar cookie bar recipe

1 cup butter
1 8-ounce block cream cheese
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup low fat buttermilk

Icing
1/2 cup butter
1 cup marshmallow fluff
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3 tbsp half  & half
1/2 tsp almond extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream butter, cream cheese, brown sugar, and white sugar. Mix until smooth. Add in eggs and mix together. Once combined, add extracts.

In a separate bowl combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Add dry mixture and buttermilk to the sugar mixture, alternating 1 cup of dry with 1/4 cup buttermilk until everything has been added and combined.

Pour batter into a jelly roll pan. Bake for 20 minutes.

While cake is baking, make the icing. Mix together butter and marshmallow fluff. Add in sugar. Once combined add in half & half and extracts.

Ice cake after it has cooled.

I had a lot of fun taking pictures of the cake today because I actually let the dogs into the room where I take pictures with me. Usually I make them sit outside the door, but today I thought it would be funny to capture their expressions.

The next picture may seem cruel, but don’t worry, Wes made sure the dogs got their fair share of cake.

And it looks like Blue Bell really has it out for me…. more Butter Crunch products. I nearly peed my pants when Wes pointed these out to me at Kroger today.

The sugar cookie cake that served as my friend’s birthday cake. It was absolutely fantastic with all the taste and texture of a sugar cookie, but covered in a rich, buttery icing. It wasn’t like a typical white or yellow cake. The only way I could even think of describing it is as a sugar cookie.  It has literally been on my mind for over a week. So, after hours of searching the web for a recipe that might be similar, I just decided to wing it.

I’ve made enough cakes to know what needs to go into them. And I had a general idea of how this cake was getting its texture, so I thought why not give it a try for Easter Sunday.

The cake turned out fantastic. Was it as good as the cake from last weekend? No. I’m completely ok admitting that. But, it was really, really good and most definitely tasted 100% like a sugar cookie. Wes actually may have solved my problem with why my cake didn’t turn out the same in terms of texture. Instead of cooking it in a typical cake pan, I actually made it in a sheet cake pan.  So, the cake was very thin, almost bar like.  Next time, I will definitely make this in a regular cake pan to see if that creates the proper denseness I’m not sure if “denseness” is even a word, but it is the most fitting.

Sugar Cookie Cake
3/4 cup unsalted butter
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
2 cups flour
1 cup cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup sour cream
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract

Icing
1 stick butter, softened
3/4 cup marshmallow fluff
2 cups powdered sugar
3 tbsp half & half
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cream together sugar and butter. Add in eggs one at a time.

In a separate bowl, combine all dry ingredients (flour, bp, bs, and salt).  Stir together.  Alternating with the buttermilk, add the dry mixture to the wet. You will want to add about 1 cup dry, mix together, 1/3 cup buttermilk, mix together, repeating the process until all of the ingredients have been added. Then, mix in sour cream, vanilla, and almond extract.

Pour batter into a prepared cake pan. If you are doing it in a sheet pan, the end result will be cake like bars. Bake for about 25 minutes. If you are going to do it in a cake pan, I can only guess what the cook time might be, so am estimating it to be about 35 to 40 minutes. Do the toothpick trick to see when it is done (insert dry toothpick into center of the cake, if it comes out clean, it’s done!).

While the cake is baking, prepare the icing. This may be my new favorite icing. I came up with it last week and am pretty much obsessed with it. What started as a way to get rid of a can of marshmallow fluff turned into my new go-to icing. Aren’t kitchen experiments fun?

Well they are when they end well at least.  I cut a few into squares also just to see how they would look. I think they are cute both ways!

Our Easter Sunday was pretty low-key actually. After a spur of the moment car sale on Friday, Wes and I were sent into car buying mania.  He didn’t make a purchase on Saturday, but we drove all over DFW trying to figure out which car might be right for him.  We’ve got it narrowed down now and he will hopefully have a car by the end of the week. Until then, we are living it up as a green one car couple.  Go us.

After a full Saturday, relaxation was in order on Sunday. We attended a sunrise service then spent the rest of the day doing what we like, napping, running, eating, and cooking. Some good friends joined us for our Easter dinner, and although we both missed our families tremendously, it was nice not having to face the let down of the long drive home after a holiday. Those are the worst… especially when your family lives 8 hours from you.

We are going into the 4th week of Isagenix and are still noticing changes. Wes’ is having quite a bit of success on it and is getting lots of comments on his changed appearance. Our results to date are posted on the running and Isagenix tab.

Rich, velvety chocolate brownies, topped with a layer of sweet Irish buttercream makes these nearly impossible to resist. Unless you don’t like chocolate… or buttercream.. then you will have no problems with temptation.

I on the other hand adore chocolate and dream of someday swimming in a pool of buttercream. Suffice to say, I sampled a few of these while baking.

They were also so cute to photograph that I ended up taking a whole swarm of pictures, so please excuse the overload of brownies. I just couldn’t decide which ones I liked best!

These will definitely be making an appearance at our St. Patty’s day tailgate this weekend and will hopefully be enjoyed by all.

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Irish Car Brownies
Heavily modified from this Guinness brownie recipe
1/2 cup margarine (or butter)
2 cups chocolate chips
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1 cup flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp salt
10 ounces Guinness beer
1 tsp vanilla

For the Icing
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup crisco
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 to 3 tbsp Baileys Irish Cream
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium sauce pan over medium heat, melt chocolate chips and margarine. Once melted, stir in sugar and stir until combined and dissolved. Add batter to the bowl of a stand mixer. Let cool for about 5 minutes.

Add eggs, incorporating one at a time to the chocolate mixture. While your stand mixer is working, whisk together cocoa powder, flour, and salt.  Once all the eggs have been added, alternate adding in flour mixture and guiness beer. Mix to combine until everything is incorporated. Then, add in vanilla.

Pour brownie batter into prepared muffin tins (spray with pam).  You can also opt to make a regular pan of brownies and use a square cutter to remove them, or just ice the entire pan.  Bake in oven for about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

While brownies are baking, prepare the icing. Cream together crisco and butter. Add in powdered sugar and Baileys, mix until combined.  Add in vanilla and mix.  Taste and adjust to sweetness level.  Ice brownies once they have cooled.

Do you have anything fun and St. Patty’s day themed on the menu for this weekend?  I’m excited to try a new braised pork recipe that I’ve been thinking up over the last few days.  In my mind it sounds delicious, so hopefully that will translate into real life.  We shall see!

And if it doesn’t work out, looks like we will be having brownies for dinner.  What a shame.

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Easter Jello Cake
1 box white cake mix
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 tsp salt
5 egg whites
1 1/3 cup water
1 cup sour cream (8 ounces)
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 box strawberry jello (you will use 1/2 cup jello packet)
1 box Pistachio jello (you will use 1/2 cup jello packet)
1 box lemon jello (you will use 1/2 cup jello packet)
Green food dye
Yellow food dye
Red food dye
Blue food dye

For the icing
3/4 cup butter
1/4 cup crisco
3 cups powdered sugar
5 tbsp half & half
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a mixer, combine cake mix, sugar, flour, and salt. Once combined add in egg whites, water, sour cream, oil, and extracts. Mix together until creamy, about 5 minutes.

Pour batter into 4 separate bowls. Add 1/2 cup strawberry jello packet to one bowl, 1/2 cup pistachio jello packet to another, 1/2 cup lemon jello packet to another, and leave the 4 bowl plain.  Stir in jello in each bowl until it is combined.  Add yellow food dye to lemon bowl, if desired. Green dye to green bowl if desired, and red and blue dye to plain batter if desired.  The strawberry flavor turned out quite pink, so didn’t need help.

Pour batter into greased 9 inch cake rounds. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

While cake is baking prepare the icing. Cream together butter and crisco. Add in powdered sugar, half & half, and vanilla. Mix until combined.

Remove cakes from the oven. Let cool for about 30 minutes. To prepare the cake layers, place strawberry cake on the bottom, roughly ice the top with buttercream, place lemon cake next, roughly ice, place pistachio flavor next, roughly ice, place plain flavor next, roughly ice.  Refrigerate for a few hours until the crumb coat has set, then finish icing the cake with all the remaining icing.

Served on pretty Easter china, or just everyday stuff, the cake still looks pretty!

I was a big, big fan of the lemon layer and almond layer of the cake, while I think Wes said he preferred the strawberry. Regardless, the flavors all taste great together and the presentation is so pretty.

I’m sorry I keep making this cake and writing about it, but in my defense, it is that good. Plus, I always try to trick out the recipe a little bit to make it slightly different. Like adding jello this time, for example.  I wasn’t kidding when I said this cake would be my go to cake recipe for white cakes from now on.

You really should try it.  Or just come over and I’ll make some for you.