Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake

I've been wanting to try making an olive oil cake for awhile and finally stopped waiting to have enough time and just made one before the blood oranges I bought just got eaten.

For my first try at this Italian classic, I tried this recipe from Smitten Kitchen. It was easy to follow and produced a subtly flavored and not too sweet cake.

I used a non-stick loaf pan, which I'll skip next time as it resulted in the edges cooking too quickly. I'll also take the time to make the suggested whip cream or a blood orange syrup to dress up this rustic cake.

Recession Fun # 14: Baking a Classic

We bought new baking sheets last weekend to replace ones well past their prime. there was a picture of chocolate chip cookies on the wrapping and my daughter said "cookies with brown spots - my favorite!"

I felt bad because she's mentioned this before but I always seem to buy Graham Crackers instead. Maybe because store bought chocolate chips seem so unhealthy and well like real junk food.

So this weekend one of our projects is going to be baking a batch of real Toll House Cookies. Yummy!

Spooky Sweets

These two Halloween cakes from "i am baker" make me wish I was more talented in the baking department. I can only imagine the patience required to pull off the Bat Cake.

I'm planning on making some cupcakes next weekend so that we can have a little Halloween celebration while we carve our pumpkin. I'm going to cheat and use box mix, but found some really cool cupcake liners and bought orange and black icing so we can get a little creative. I figure it's better to compromise and end up with cupcakes than be over ambitious and end up just short on time. Cupcakes from scratch is just going to have to wait for less hectic days.