Chocolate layer cake

 

One of my brother’s friends is having a birthday party tonight. Every guest is supposed to make  something sweet; of course my brother took the easy route by asking me to bake something. He said I could make whatever I wanted. It can get a bit overwhelming, when you get complete free range like that, can’t it? There are so many things I want to bake, and sometimes it’s hard to decide. Especially when you’re not the one who will be doing the eating. What if my brother’s friends – and the birthday boy! – don’t like what I chose? In the end I decided to go with chocolate. Because, honestly, who doesn’t like chocolate? I’m very pleased with the end result and, to be honest, slightly bitter that I have to give this whole cake away without being able to have a taste!

I took this Devil’s Food cake recipe from this post; I decided to go with a vanilla butter cream instead of the meringue frosting they used. I got some inspiration for the decoration from this lovely post but ended up using (store bought) meringue to top off the cake instead of piping even more butter cream on top of the ganache. I was afraid it’d be a bit of a butter cream overkill!

Strawberry layer cake

I sometimes have those days where I want to bake something – but I have absolutely no idea what. My pinterest boards are so full of wonderful pictures and amazing recipes that I want to try, that amidst all of it I just don’t know what to choose. Yesterday was one of those days: I just didn’t know. But I wanted to bake something. So instead of choosing something from all the recipes I’ve put aside to try one day – I went and looked for another recipe. Typical. I ended up searching for   and finding a strawberry layer cake recipe with orange zest and vanilla that sounded divine. Since strawberries are the food of spring – even though sometimes it looks more like autumn that spring in Belgium, these days – I thought: yes. This’ll be the one. 

Brownie peanut butter pie!

Yesterday I finished my first week of the bakery course I’ll be taking this year! Eep, super exciting! I’ll be having bakery classes, patisserie classes, classes in chocolate (and finances/marketing etc.) On our second day we made pralines, and yesterday we baked a white loaf of bread. To say that I’m really pleased with my life right now is a bit of an understatement! To celebrate I’ll post the pictures of the brownie peanut butter pie I made for a friend last week. He was in the mood for chocolate and peanut butter, and when I saw this recipe down at Sprinkle Bakes I knew it had to be this pie!

Visit the Sprinkle Bakes’ original post for (1) the recipe and (2) amazing pictures of a far less-sloppy version of this pie. My technique needs some work, but the pie apparently tasted very yummy, so I was pretty proud.

Red Velvet Cake

Every couple of months I break down and (attempt to) bake a Red Velvet cake. Red Velvet is one of those cakes everybody seems to love, but personally I haven’t had the best experiences with it. It’s not a very common cake here in Europe, and the one time I had one  (a Red Velvet cupcake from Harrods) wasn’t a terribly great experiences because there was a big chunk of baking soda in the little cake, which almost burned a hole through my tongue. If I want Red Velvet I have to make it myself, and because I don’t really want it I hardly ever bake it – except every once in a while I think: Everbody just can’t be wrong about this cake. And then I give it another shot.

This time around it actually worked, and I’m a bit of a fan of this recipe, to be honest.

Banana chocolate chip cake

What does one do when one is faced with four over-ripe bananas nobody wants to eat anymore? One bakes something banana-y. Also: add chocolate. Adding chocolate is always a good idea.