The last few days have been completely taken over by math.  Matrices haunt my dreams, I’m constantly running through proofs and derivations, and I’m sort of accepting the fact that number theory is way over my head.  This stupid test is in two weeks and I can’t wait to have my life back.

When I wasn’t studying this week, I was out with the fam.  We went to a LOT of restaurants, and kept Ellie out past her bedtime more than once.  Oops.

Good thing she inherited my ability to sleep just about anywhere.

Having family around means that desserts don’t last long (and that’s a good thing), so I jumped at the chance to try a cake Mike had been eyeing in Joy the Baker’s cookbook.

I was a tiny bit hesitant about this cake.  The last time I tried to bake with peanut butter (making something other than cookies), it was a big fat fail.  I tried to make a peanut butter banana bread but it was dense and gritty and unpleasant.   That was three years ago.  Ever since then I figured baking with peanut butter should be left to cookies.  I should have known Joy wouldn’t mess it up, though.  This cake has a nice, light crumb with the perfect amount of peanut butter flavor.

I frosted it with a basic peanut butter buttercream, and it was divine.  I think the only thing that might have made it better would be some sliced bananas in between the cake layers.  I’m definitely going to do that next time.  Maybe to celebrate being done with my ridiculous math test!

I actually made these a few weeks ago, but I really wish I could be eating one right now. These days, I’m not drinking much coffee. Okay, kind of a lie. I’m not drinking much caffeinated coffee.

But I made an exception for the coffee in these.

I’d like to take a minute and show off my new favorite grocery store, Rainbow Grocery (and I promise this does tie in with these cupcakes…wait for it).

First of all, you can get pretty much ANYTHING in bulk. Any dried fruit you may want:

A billion kinds of legumes, including a bunch of beans I have never heard of but now am obsessed with finding recipes for so I can buy them because they’re so pretty.

More kinds of rice than I ever knew existed.

And then there’s the chocolate-covered section. It’s a dangerous place. However, the beauty of it is you can buy the exact number of chocolate-covered espresso beans you need for these cupcakes, so you won’t eat a ton of leftovers and get your baby so caffeinated she doesn’t sleep.

Another perk? They give you 5 cents off for every single container you bring! We usually get at least a dollar off every visit!

Anyway, cupcakes. I feel that there are two camps when frosting is concerned. There’s the “dainty not-too-sweet meringue buttercream” camp, and then there’s the “extra sweet is extra good” camp. I fall into the latter, so I made a basic powdered sugar and butter frosting that, yes, is very sweet (just how I like it). If you’re more of a Swiss Meringue Buttercream fan, follow Josie’s lead.

(adapted from Cupcake Bakeshop via Pink Parsley)

I cannot believe how many of my food blogging friends are having babies this year! Today a huge group of us are celebrating Krystal’s baby, who is on his or her way (nobody will know until it gets here!) in 10 weeks.

I met Krystal at Foodbuzz Festival in November and she’s awesome. We sat together at the Friday night dinner and she is hilarious and sweet.

(photo from Jessica)

Since Krystal is Filipino and her husband, Eric is Cuban, we all made a dish inspired by one of those cuisines. I chose to go in the Filipino direction, and since some of the best mangoes in the world come from the Philippines, I made mango cupcakes.

Unfortunately, the cupcake recipe I used was fairly disappointing, but the mango buttercream was great. So I would recommend making your favorite white or yellow cupcakes and frosting them with this. If I ever find mango extract, I’ll probably try them again, but I think the take-home lesson here is: when things go wrong, eat frosting!

Krystal and Eric, I’m so excited for you to meet Cookie in about 9 weeks; you’re going to be great parents!

I kicked off Big Sur Marathon training with a 15.27 mile run on Sunday. I spent a lot of the run in Golden Gate Park, thinking with every step how grateful I am to have this amazing place to run just a few miles from my house.

I kept it nice and easy, finishing in 2:18 (9:03 min/mile).

I know Easter’s not for awhile, but it’s not too early to start thinking about dessert! Oh! Nuts offered to send me some Jordan almonds to use in a baked good or craft, and I immediately envisioned cupcakes with Jordan almonds for decoration.

These have chocolate, almond meal, and coconut inside, with fluffy white frosting, toasted coconut, and Jordan almonds on top. Hard to go wrong with that combination!

(from Epicurious)

Courtney is a Facebook and blogging friend that I’ve never met in real life, but I’m SO excited to be a part of a virtual baby shower in honor of the little girl she’s expecting next month! (Thanks for hosting, Josie!)

It took me forever to decide what to make for this. At first I was thinking something savory, and then I decided I wanted to make cupcakes (sort of fitting since Courtney worked at a cupcake bakery!) Pink lemonade cupcakes seemed like a pretty good baby shower dessert, and Mike and I both loved these.

The recipe I found online called for cake mix and pudding mix, which definitely was not going to happen, so I turned to Joy of Cooking and cut their white cake recipe in half, with a little lemon extract instead of vanilla. Then I just mixed some pink lemonade concentrate into the frosting.

Courtney, I’m so excited for you and your husband to welcome your sweet baby girl, and she’s one lucky kid to get you as parents!

(adapted from Joy of Cooking and inspired by The White Library)

Weekends are so much better now that I’m back at work.  I appreciate them about a million times more than I did when every day was pretty much the same.  Obviously it was great having Mike home all day on the weekends, but now there’s even more of a focus for both of us on spending quality time with Ellie.

There’s more time for enjoying tea, which has become my new Friday night beverage of choice.

I did end up having a beer after this, but I couldn’t even finish it because I fell asleep on the couch at 8:30.  Oh parenthood, you do crazy things to people.

There’s more time to savor the view out of Ellie’s window as the sun is coming up.  I was never really big on sleeping in, so this getting up before the sun comes up thing actually isn’t too much of a life change.

And more time for BAKING!  When I was driving home from work yesterday I had pretty much made up my mind that I was going to bake oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.  But then I realized I’ve done that too many times, and I had plenty of time to bake something new.  Oatmeal snack cake seemed like a good idea, but adding chocolate chips was essential.  For some people, this is probably too indulgent for breakfast or snack, but it makes a great casual dessert!

Yeah, another cake. I will eventually post healthy recipes again one of these days, but I’ve been making a lot of repeats lately, or just giant salads that definitely aren’t worthy of a blog post. So you get cake again!

Ellie got to meet her great-grandparents this weekend. They flew down from Oregon for a few days and we marked the occasion with beer and cake. Mike even introduced them to beermosas (beer + orange juice…we’re classy like that).

Any time there are extra people around, I like to make cake, because it means I won’t end up eating the whole thing. Except this time I kind of wanted to.

I normally require a LOT more frosting than this on cake, but the brown butter is so rich and flavorful, it was actually perfect in such a small dose. The recipe was originally written to make a single-layer 9″ cake, but I baked it in two 6″ pans instead because stacked cakes just seem more festive.

Recipe
(from Martha Stewart via Shutterbean)

cake
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup canned pumpkin puree
1/2 cup warm (110 degrees) milk

frosting
4 tbsp butter
1 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1-2 tbsp milk

Grease a 9″ pan (or 2 6″ pans) and line the bottoms with parchment.

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Sift the flour, spices, salt, baking soda, and baking powder together and set aside.

Beat the butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer until light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the eggs one at a time.

Add the milk and pumpkin and mix until smooth.

Add the flour mixture and mix on low until just combined. Pour the batter into the pan(s) and bake for about 50 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

To make the frosting, sift the powdered sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer.

Melt the butter over medium heat, stirring occasionally until it’s nut-brown (don’t let it get too dark!)

Pour the butter through a mesh strainer into the sugar, and add the vanilla and one tablespoon of milk. Beat on medium until smooth, adding more milk if necessary to reach a spreadable consistency.

I made this cake for my grandpa’s birthday.

This is my grandpa, my mom’s dad. His birthday was October 22 or 23, depending on whether you choose to believe the state of Montana or his mother. He grew up on a farm in Montana, then ended up marrying my grandma, had 5 kids, and ran a music store in Eugene, Oregon.

I never got to meet him, because he died suddenly of a heart attack when my mom was 25. He wasn’t alive to see my mom get married or meet any of his eight grandchildren.

When he was still alive, he always had chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and chocolate ice cream on his birthday. My mom has kept that tradition going and makes a chocolate cake for his birthday every year. This year, she used this recipe, and it really is the best.

This is the first year I’ve made a cake for him. Since I had Ellie, family has become a lot more important to me, and now more than ever I wish that I’d gotten to meet him.

Recipe:
(from My Baking Addiction)

makes 1 9″ 2-layer cake (I halved the recipe to make 1 6″ 2-layer cake)

2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup + 2 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup strong black coffee
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease 2 9″ pans and line the bottoms with parchment.

Whisk all the dry ingredients together in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add the eggs, buttermilk, coffee, oil, and vanilla, and mix on medium for two minutes.

Pour the batter into the cake pans and bake for about 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cool in the pans for about 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Frost with your favorite chocolate frosting.

I was initially drawn to chocolate cupcakes with some kind of raspberry filling, and chocolate ganache on top, but when I found the recipe for chocolate raspberry ganache in The Secrets of Baking, I knew there was nothing else that would be more appealing. I wanted it to really stand out, so instead of making a chocolate cupcake, I made a buttermilk genoise from the same book.

The cupcakes initially looked like a complete failure when I pulled them from the oven. They pulled away from the sides of the pan and there were huge indentations in the tops. I found online that a bunch of other people had this problem, but realized it was actually kind of perfect because it made an ideal place to pipe the ganache.

I may try experimenting with other genoise recipes in the future, but I actually loved the way these turned out, and the flavor and texture were perfect (which to me is more important than how they look anyway). The only change I made to the ganache recipe was using chocolate chips because I had them on hand, and adding heavy cream while whipping to lighten the texture. The only thing I might change is to make 1 1/4 or 1 1/2 recipes next time, because I only had enough for a small rosette on each cupcake.

And if you happen to have any leftover raspberries or want to do something a little healthier, this mornings smoothie included a bunch of raspberries, a frozen banana, almond milk, chocolate protein powder, and chia seeds, and it was almost as good as a cupcake!
Recipe
(adapted from The Secrets of Baking by Sherry Yard)

makes 24 cupcakes

cupcakes
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
4 large eggs
6 ounces butter, melted
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 tsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 F and line 24 cupcake tins with paper liners.

Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder together three times.

Set a saucepan of water over medium heat and bring to a simmer (turn down the heat if it starts to boil). Put the eggs and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer and set it over the simmering water, whisking with a wire whisk constantly until a thermometer reads 110 F.

Using the whisk attachment of the stand mixer, beat the eggs and sugar on high for about 6 minutes, or until pale and fluffy and a ribbon forms when drizzled from a spatula. Beat for an additional 2 minutes on medium, then turn to low and mix in the melted butter.

Fold in 1/3 of the dry ingredients using a wire whisk. Add 1/3 of the buttermilk and fold gently. Repeat with remaining flour and buttermilk. Gently stir in the vanilla.

Divide evenly among the cupcake tins, filling each nearly to the top. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until golden on top. The cupcake should not stay indented when you press gently on it with your finger.

Cool in the pans for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely (the tops may cave in, but that’s a great place to pipe ganache!)

When completely cool, top with the whipped ganache.

ganache
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
4 oz butter, melted
1 cup fresh raspberries, pureed and strained (about 1/3 cup puree), at room temperature
1/2 cup heavy cream

24 raspberries

Melt the chocolate chips in the top of a double boiler. Using a rubber spatula, stir in the butter until smooth. Stir in the raspberry puree and mix until smooth. Transfer to a stand mixer with the whisk attachment and beat on medium high until the mixture is room temperature. Pour in the heavy cream and continue whipping until stiff enough to pipe.

Pipe a rosette onto each cupcake then top with a raspberry. Store in the refrigerator.

How to have an amazing 27th birthday weekend:

1. Start with a jazz concert on Friday night

(CeU is a jazz singer from Brazil and she is incredibly talented…so is her band. I’ve never really listened that much to music like this before, but when someone at Mike’s work offered him tickets, he took them up on it and I’m happy he did!)

2. Get some pizza after said concert (cheese and pineapple, naturally)

(We found a pretty decent pizza place not too far from where we live… never would have known it was there if it weren’t for Yelp!)

3. Run a leisurely 4 miles on Saturday morning
(I like to think of my runs as leisurely or relaxing instead of just plain slow these days)

4. Have dinner at Cha-Ya Vegetarian Japanese Restaurant (762 Valencia, San Francisco)

(vegan gyoza, miso soup, inventive and vegetable-packed rolls…heaven!)

5. Have dessert at Bi-Rite Creamery (3692 18th St, San Francisco)

(Even though it’s 10:30 PM, cold and windy, and the line is half a block long, the malted vanilla with peanut brittle and milk chocolate is totally worth the wait)

6. Realize that you’re too tired to frost your cake, so it will have to wait until Sunday.

7. Get up on Sunday, go spend the day hanging out in the city, and finally get around to finishing your birthday cake on Sunday evening.

I don’t eat pistachios very often, but they are delicious in this cake! The flavor of the finished product is a little reminiscent of baklava, and the frosting is light (well, as light as it can be with 3 sticks of butter), fluffy, honey-vanilla goodness. I made the cake pretty much as written, but because I was out of pastry flour, I used 3 cups of all purpose, which I sifted twice. I didn’t have 3 8″ pans, so I used 9″ pans instead, which shortened the baking time a little. The cooked-flour frosting is something I’d never tried before, and it looked a little curdled while it was coming together, but just keep your mixer running – it will eventually smooth out!

Recipe:
(adapted from Baked Explorations via Pink Parsley Catering)

cake
1 cup shelled pistachios (plus 1/3 cup for decorating)
3 cups all purpose flour, sifted twice
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon. vanilla extract
1 large egg
3 large egg whites, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups ice cold water
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar

buttercream
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, soft but cool, cut into small pieces
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup honey

Preheat the oven to 325° F. Butter three 8 or 9-inch round cake pans, line the bottoms with parchment paper and butter the parchment. Dust parchment with flour and shake out excess flour.

Pulse the pistachios in a food processor until they are coarsely chopped. Transfer about 2 tablespoons of the coarse pistachios to a large bowl. Continue to process the rest of the pistachios until they are almost powdery- but not superfine. Stir the pistachio powder into the reserved coarse pistachios. Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt, together over the large bowl containing the pistachios. Stir to combine.

Beat the butter and shortening on medium speed with the paddle attachment until creamy, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the sugar and vanilla and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the bowl, add the whole egg, and beat until just combined. Turn the mixture to low.

In a measuring cup, make 1 1/2 cups ice water. Add the flour mixture to the mixer in three parts, alternating with the ice water, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. For each addition, turn the mixer to low to add ingredients, then up to medium speed for a few seconds until incorporated. Scrape down the bowl, then mix on low speed for a few more seconds.

In a medium bowl, whisk the egg whites and cream of tartar until soft peaks form (This is easy to do by hamd and gives your arm a workout!). Do not overbeat. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

Divide the batter among the prepared pans and smooth the tops. Bake for about 30 minutes (9 inch layers) or 35 minutes (8 inch layers), rotating the pans halfway through the baking time, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Transfer the pans to a wire rack and let cool for 20 minutes. Turn the cakes out onto the rack, remove the parchment and let cool completely.

To make the frosting, whisk the sugar and flour together in a medium heavy-bottom saucepan. Add milk and cream and cook over medium heat whisking occasionally, until the mixture comes to a boil and has thickened, about 10 to 15 minutes.

Transfer the mixture to the bowl of a standing mixer with paddle attachment. Beat on high speed until cool (at least 7 or 8 minutes) then add the butter a few pieces at a time and mix until thoroughly incorporated. Increase the speed to medium-high and beat until frosting is light, fluffy, and smooth.

Add the vanilla and honey and continue mixing until combined. If the frosting is too soft, put the bowl in the refrigerator to chill slightly, then beat again until it is proper consistency. If the frosting is too firm, set the bow over a pot of simmering water and beat with a wooden spoon until it is the proper consistency.

Assemble the cake: Place one cake layer on a serving platter. Trim the top to create a flat surface, and evenly spread about 1 1/4 cups frosting on top. Add the next layer, trim and frost it, then add the third layer. Spread the sides and top of the cake with the remaining frosting. Garnish the cake with chopped pistachios and refrigerate it for 15 minutes to it firm up before serving.

It is fine to keep this cake at room temperature for a few days. If you decide to keep it in the fridge, let it come to room temperature before serving.