Mini Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

As part of our Anti-SuperBowl party, I knew I wanted to serve something sweet, small, and cute. I figured miniature cupcakes would be just the thing and, this being the south, settled on Red Velvet Cupcakes.

My mother once described red velvet cake as "chocolate cake with a bottle of red food coloring!". These cupcakes put the lie to that description with a flavor all their own and only a few tablespoons of red food coloring. They are complex and nuanced and absolutely delicious.

This post has been linked up to Sweets for a Saturday over at Sweet as Sugar Cookies.

Chocolate (Beet) Cake

My daily contribution to my year long "Around the House" photo project. 365 photos. Blogged here.



Somewhere in my traipsing around the internet, I landed on a Flickr picture of a gorgeous chocolate cake. A chocolate beet cake. Now, I like chocolate, I like beets, and I like trying novel combinations. Clearly this cake was made for me! Sadly, most people don't have the same reaction I do. Most people have said "BEETS? Eugh!" So here's my suggestion: don't tell them. Just say it's a lovely chocolate cake. They'll never be able to guess what the secret ingredient is and you can spare yourself a lot of heartache. On second though, go right ahead and tell them, that way you can keep this cake all to yourself.

Pound Cake

I have a confession to make. I don't really like cake. It's too fluffy and nonexistent for the calories involved. I like food with substance--thick, fudgey brownies; chunky, chewy cookies; and rich, buttery pound cake. Quite possibly the only cake worth an appearance on the dessert menu.

So when my birthday came by last month, I knew exactly what kind of birthday cake I wanted and set out to make myself a pound cake. My mother had sent me a copy of Dessert by William Sonoma for my birthday that just happened to have a recipe for pound cake.

Peanut Butter Banana Cake

The other day I found myself with Very Ripe Bananas and fresh buttermilk (left over from our adventures in making butter.) And, in one of those "suddenly you see it everywhere" coincidences, recipes for banana cakes began popping up everywhere. Having already made banana cake once before I wanted something a bit different, so I was happy to see a rather novel combination from Buns in my Oven.

Peanut butter and banana. It works.

Chocolate Cupcakes

I am not really a cake fan (they are generally too light for my taste) but every so often I get a hankering for cupcakes. And just before I left on my business trip I got it into my head that we must make chocolate cupcakes. And so we did.

I used the recipe from Joy the Baker for Double Chocolate Devil's Food Cake with Fresh Raspberries.

We are an anti-coffee household and I didn't want to risk having the cupcakes taste of coffee because I knew they would just get pitched, so I adapted the recipe slightly. Here's what I did.

Tropical Cupcakes

Generally speaking, I am not a big fan of carrot cake. Store bought carrot cake is a crime against taste, it's dry and full of raisins. Blech. Happily speaking, my mother happens to make some of the best carrot cake ever. In an ironic twist of fate, she calls it her "Southern Carrot Cake" and here I am in the south. And with, no lie, twenty pounds of carrots left over from an event.

Raspberry Chocolate Cake

I grew up in a house where the only cake we baked from scratch was my mom's carrot cake. Anything else was either from a box mix or the frozen aisle. As I've gotten older it's occurred to me that their are plenty of wonderful cake recipes out there and surely some of them must be better than the too fluffy cake mixes.

So when my hubby requested a chocolate cake for his birthday I was on a mission to find the best chocolate cake recipe I could. And then I stumbled across something even better. The idea to use jam in the batter to make a fruit flavored caked. You see, fruit + chocolate is pretty much my hubby's favorite sweet combination ever. Ever ever.

Banana Chocolate Chip Cake

I saw this recipe posted by Oven Haven and since I happened to have 3 mostly black bananas (and had made banana bread a couple weeks ago) I thought I would give it ago. Only, you know, with chocolate.

Now, having never even eaten banana cake, I had no idea what I was in for, but this cake is a new favorite. Dense yet fluffy, lightly bannana-y, and just the right amount of chocolate. Delicious. And definitely a keeper. We didn't frost ours, preferring it lightly sweet, just as is, but a dense chocolate ganache as suggested on Oven Haven would be heavenly and make this cake the hit of any party.