Purple Watercolor Cake

There's this cool frosting technique called 'watercolor'. It's actually really easy and it turned out beautifully!

Happy Birthday, Monike! I hope you have a wonderful day :)

Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, and (almost) Sugar-Free Cakes

This Week's Challenge: To make a cake that is dairy, gluten, and sugar-free that still tastes like a cake. 

The Solution: Try a bunch of different things and finally understand that life as a Celiac (or with other dietary restrictions) is HARD! 

This is still a work in progress, but I've found a few ways to make flour, dairy, and almost sugar-free cakes that actually taste like cake. 

(Note: the 'almost' in front of sugar-free comes from the frosting. How can you make frosting that tastes sweet without having some kind of sweetener?!?! I'll keep working on it.)

It's been a lot of fun to research and try out different methods. So far I've had two work out pretty well-- a vanilla cake and a chocolate one. 

Here's a link to the recipe for vanilla cake and coconut cream frosting. 

I'm just going to forewarn you-- there's a lot of raving about how good gluten free cakes taste, especially by the authors of the recipes. Generally they are pretty good, but they are in a different taste category from normal butter-and-flour cakes.

Piper liked 'em :) 

Here's the second recipe that worked quite well- gluten, dairy, and almost sugar free chocolate cupcakes. These were tasty and seemed pretty healthy-- we all enjoyed eating them the first and second day. 

Here's some notes for anyone interested (and for me, when I need to remember what I've already learned :)

• Cocoa powder dries out the cake-- do not over-add
• Coconut oil gives cake a nice depth
• GF (gluten free) cake doesn't really rise. What you put in the oven is the same size as what you bring back out
• GF cake tastes best on the day that it is baked (in other words, start baking at the crack of dawn if you're doing a GF birthday cake)
• Every blogger has a preference for certain GF flour blends, but I did fine with the normal Pillsbury blend bought from Wal Mart. 
• Coconut sugar is a great substitute for normal sugar. It's light, slightly sweet, and feels healthier. I'm a fan. 
• Making a tasty GF cake is very possible, it just takes some patience and willingness to experiment. 
• When making butter and dairy-free frosting, I leaned heavily on using vegetable shortening as a replacement for butter. I also added some vegan butter, but shortening needs to be the main base.

I'll let you know if this progresses. Anyone else out there trying GF recipes?

-Jenna

Chocolate-Cheesecake Cupcakes (WITH DINOSAURS!)

One of my (early) Mother's Day gifts this year is a silicon pan with dinosaur shapes. Of course we immediately melted some chocolate to try it out, and it was such a glorious success that we made cupcakes to go with them!

The pan is exciting because A. I love dinosaurs and B. we are having a baby boy this September so it's time to start stocking up on dinosaurs and robots!

Cheesecake filling

Love these tiny treat boxes!

-Jenna