Brown Butter, Pumpkin, and Caramelized Walnuts- A Delicious Match

These three ingredients are a match made in heaven and some of my new favorite flavors for fall. This pumpkin spice cake with brown butter icing and caramelized walnuts was actually very easy to make and filled the house with the aroma of fall food.

The recipe was from Martha Stewart and I used canned pumpkin, which had one ingredient: organic pumpkin. I prefer to add the spices myself. I haven't ever made a pie from fresh pumpkin and from what I have heard, it can be very tricky to get the right consistency when using fresh pumpkin. Has anyone made their own pumpkin puree and does it have significantly better flavor? For time's sake, I used canned.

I also wanted to try out my small cake pans again and I thought I would use the leftover batter to make a half bundt cake.

The batter was easy to make. With standard spices, vanilla, eggs and canned pumpkin.

The small cakes baked nicely and with a less significant dome shape than with the lavender cakes.

The half-bundt also turned out well!

I caramelized the walnuts on the stove with a bit of sugar. This works nicely for nuts in salads as well!
I placed the coated nuts onto foil and used two spoons to separate the nuts. Then, I did the something stupid. I know molten sugar is dangerous, and of course I used my hands to separate the nuts. And totally burned my finger- blistered it. So, the moral of the story is, don't touch hot sugar.

The icing was made using browned butter (shown above) and straining any burned bits, then mixed with milk, vanilla, and powdered sugar.

The results was three mini cakes with delicious icing...


and one bundt cake with less than perfect icing because I ran short and thinned it with milk. The emulsion of butter and milk was unstable and broke...but it tasted fine and by then my finger really hurt so I was done fussing with it.

The crumb was pleasantly spiced and moist! An easy and delicious treat for fall! Happy baking!

A Mother's Cookies Haiku Tribute

Mother's Cookies in Oakland, California has closed its doors after 92 years. I am mourning the loss of English Tea cookies, Iced Oatmeal cookies, the ever favorite Cookie Parade with Frosted Circus Animals, just to name a few. I loved these cookies growing up. In tribute, I am writing three haiku poems to express my cookie love.

Circus Animals

Tigers, elephants

sprinkled frosting, pink and white

childhood memory now

Iced Oatmeal

Which package on shelf

has the most frosting of all?

I guess as I choose.

English Tea

Hearty cookie stack

filled with rich, creamy frosting

Who needs a teacup?

Simply Beautiful: Fresh Fruit and Cakes

I am on the road this week and can't do any baking so I'm going to share last year's birthday cake for Justin and Kristi. This cake was from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook, in fact it was on the cover. My good friend, Brandy, had Martha sign it for me at a book signing in Minneapolis.

I love Martha Stewart and I would love love love to meet her someday...In the meantime, I will buy her magazine and bake her cakes and make her crafts! My inner Martha is strong...


Essentially this cake was two layer cakes that were cut into thinner layers

and layered with fresh whipping cream and berries.

As you can see, it was so easy and so beautiful...I think some of the most beautiful and delicious cakes I have seen have been made with fresh fruit.


It was a festive and happy birthday!

Baking with Lavender

This year McCormick introduced lavender into America's spice rack even though some people have probably been cooking with it long before. I found this culinary lavender below at Draeger's and couldn't wait to use it. It's important to make sure the lavender you use is food grade and doesn't have pesticides or other non-food grade chemicals.

This was my first baking experience with lavender and I didn't want it to taste like perfume, which can happen if you use too much. I also wanted to make a mini-layer cake with my new pans. To see the lavender cake recipe I used, click here. It gave a light lavender flavor without being overwhelmingly floral. I made a butter and powdered sugar frosting with a touch of vanilla.


Lately, I have been a bit obsessed with the candy melts which I know aren't really made with quality ingredients, but they are really fun to play with and they are easy to use. I wanted to make flowers based on these sketches.

So I melted the purple candy melts, piped the design onto waxed paper and sprinkled them with purple sanding sugar. You can put the design in the fridge to harden immediately or leave it out to harden.

I also piped two colors into each other and spread them and sugared them as well.


and it resulted in my favorite design.


I also used nonpareils which looked nice. They bounce like crazy when you shake them off, however.

Layering two flower designs...


One other option using edible pearls...


Finally I made the mini-cake which was a disappointment. The pans are significantly tapered so the layers don't stack properly. The cakes were very domed-shaped and I chose to level one layer but leave the top dome. It looked like a beehive!! Actually that would be a cute cake with little candy melt bees! I carefully adhered the sugared flowers all over the cake and I quite liked the effect. So despite the funky shaped cake, I did like the decorations.


One last confession and request for suggestions...I am not a very good cake leveler (see the checkerboard cake post). Does anyone have any suggestions beyond using toothpicks to mark out the cake. Is there a gadget to help me do a better job? Is there such a thing as a cake level? If not, I might have to make one.

Wedding Cake Revisited

Take a peek at our latest foodspiration blog entry to see the wedding cake we had remade to celebrate our five year anniversary. It's a little trip down wedding memory lane.

A Cupcake Debate

Well, I found two websites that have the most beautiful cupcakes I have ever seen:

1) Martha Stewart's Website Cupcake Contest. Click here to see all of the finalists. And click here to see my very favorite, a Japanese tea set cupcake.

2) Le Cupcake in Australia. Click here to see these cute cupcakes. I love this one with the cows.

While I was admiring these cupcakes, I did start to wonder if these masterpieces are still "cupcakes"? Many of them seem to about the wonderful gum paste figures and roses which really could be on any sort of cake. I would imagine that while they look lovely and ornate, they might not taste very good. The Hello Cupcake book that I have is also really about appearances rather than taste. I think the thing that is wonderful about cupcakes and the reason they are so popular right now is the perfect size and delicious taste.  While I love the ornate sculptural creations, I think they should still taste good. Sometimes, I get caught up in the appearance over taste. When is a cupcake still a cupcake and when does it become edible art?

Coming in the next post: Lemon Lavender Cake