Hello Kitty Cupcakes

G turned 3 in December, right after Christmas. This was the first year that she was really aware of birthday parties and had definite opinions on what she wanted. This was also the first year that we had to combine all the chaos of Christmas with making her birthday something separate and special.

For her party, she wanted Hello Kitty cupcakes. I was not going to spend the money on custom order, special design cupcakes for a 3 year old birthday party but she was insistent. Hello Kitty ON the cupcakes. Not the wrapper. Not the table. Not the walls. Not a balloon. Not even a cake. Cupcakes.

Now, I could have printed little cupcake toppers on cardstock and stuck them in with a toothpick or bought strange, hard sugar things stuck to cardboard that look vaguely like a white cat with a bow. But no. Somehow crazy-mom took over and she was going to have real, decorated cupcakes. Because I always had cakes with real icing decoration in whatever theme I wanted, my daughter would too. Never mind that we no longer have the family bakery to this. Never mind I won't spend more than a dollar on a cupcake for 3 year olds. It. Will. Happen.

And they kind of look like Hello Kitty. I was terrified she would end up with cupcake wrecks.

Frosted Chocolate Beet Birthday Cake

Three words send fear into the heart of many a parent. Toddler Birthday Party.

Okay. Really, it's not that bad, but when you've been going to them almost every week for a couple months, sometimes twice in one day, your kid starts to ask questions. Is it my birthday? Is it your birthday? The cat's birthday? Is there cake? Can we get cake? Make cake? Juice box, please?

Last Saturday we had one birthday party in the afternoon and another birthday at our house in the evening. Do I want to put a two year old to bed after they eat treats all afternoon and evening? Do I want to tell the two year old there's no cake at a birthday party? Do I want to put candles in a loaf of bread? No. No. Yes, but the five year old might notice there's something wrong with his birthday "cake".

How about frosted chocolate birthday cake with less sugar and some nutrition thrown in? Yes. And it even uses up the beets! Kids and adults loved it. I didn't get a chance to take a picture before it was demolished.

The frosting tastes more like peanut butter than chocolate and is better if you let it sit overnight. For a dairy-free option, make sure to use dairy-free chocolate chips.

Chocolate Beet Cake
200 grams all-purpose flour (about 1-1/2 cups)
150 grams brown sugar (about 3/4 cup)
50 grams unsweetened cocoa powder (about 1/2 cup)
1 Tablespoon cornstarch
1 Tablespoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1-3/4 cups pureed cooked beets
1 very ripe banana, pureed
2 Tablespoons vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease a 9-inch square cake pan.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, cocoa, cornstarch, baking soda and cinnamon. In a separate bowl, combine beets, banana, vinegar and oil. Add wet ingredients to dry and stir well to combine. Stir in chocolate chips. Spread in prepared pan. Bake until a tester comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Cool in pan for 10 minutes then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Frosting
1-3/4 cups pumpkin puree (if homemade, drain overnight in a coffee filter to thicken)
1 cup chocolate chips, melted
1/4 cup peanut butter

Combine all ingredients in a blender and puree until smooth. Makes enough to frost a single layer cake and pipe decoration.

Lemon Flaxseed Loaf Cake

This is a cake for lemon lovers. Sometimes I just want clean citrus flavors. Nothing else will do, not even chocolate or ginger. So faced with a yearning for citrus, a bag full of lemons, and dislike of poppy seeds, I came up with this moist, tender, distinctly lemon cake where the flax seeds give just a hint of nuttiness. If you are really crazy about lemon, double the amount of glaze and coat the loaf on all sides, slowly so it all soaks in.

Lemon Flaxseed Cake
90 g whole-wheat pastry flour (about 3/4 cup)
130 g all-purpose flour (about 1 cup)
20 g flaxseed meal (about 3 tablespoons)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
200 g sugar (about 1 cup)
1-1/2 Tablespoons lemon zest (2 large lemons, use juice in glaze)
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup half-and-half (or additional yogurt)
Lemon Glaze

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease & flour a 9" x 5" loaf pan.

In a bowl, whisk together flours, flaxseed, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside. In a separate large bowl, whisk together eggs, sugar and lemon zest until pale. Add butter to egg mixture and whisk to combine. Add yogurt and half-and-half to egg mixture and whisk to combine. Sprinkle 1/3 of the flour mixture over the egg mixture and gently stir just to combine. Repeat in 2 more additions, stirring just to combine, lumps are okay.

Bake until tester comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Remove from pan and poke holes in the top and sides of the cake with a toothpick. Slowly drizzle glaze all over, making sure it soaks in and trying to waste as little as possible to drips. Cool completely.

Lemon Glaze
3 Tablespoons lemon juice (2 large lemons)
2 Tablespoons sugar

Heat lemon juice and sugar gently, stirring until sugar dissolves.

Whole Wheat Apple Cake

Occasionally, I get it in my head to come up with a baked good that will satisfy my mother-in-law's love of sweets but also fit with the low-sugar, low-refined carbohydrate diet that she should be following. Even more occasionally, this works.

The first version of this cake was way too dry & crumbly, although it tasted good. Just a bit more fat and it became something much more enjoyable to eat. If you use applesauce in place of the half-and-half, it will be a bit less tender but still good.

Whole Wheat Apple Cake
210 g whole wheat pastry flour (about 1-3/4 cups)
26 g ground flax seed (about 1/4 cup)
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt
200 g light brown sugar (about 1/2 cup)
2 large eggs
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup half-and-half or unsweetened applesauce
1-1/2 cups sweet red apples (fuji), unpeeled, diced small (about 2 small)

Preheat oven to 375°. Grease and flour a 9" x 4" loaf pan.

In a large bowl, combine flour, flax seed, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, ginger, and salt.
In another bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs, buttermilk, oil and half-and-half. Add wet ingredients to dry, stirring just until moist. Fold in apples. Pour into prepared pan.

Bake until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean, about 30-35 minutes. Cool in pan on rack for 10 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely.

Chocolate Kahlua Bundt Cake

Christmas Eve when in Hawaii is spent at the home of my mother's friend. In classic local style, the men are outside with the cooler of beer, poke, and grill, while the women eat and talk story with an insane quantity of food inside. The men come in solely to fill their plates or to drop off even more food from the grill. Multiple starches are a must. I mean, how do you survive without rice, noodles AND potatoes?

Multiple desserts are a must, too. I'm generally expected to come up with at least two choices. This year, my mother requested a chocolate bundt cake, moist and with a glaze. She talked longingly of the way the bakery used to make a cake (rum cake?) that would get fully submerged in glaze, leaving it completely encased in sweet, slightly crisp, goodness. Well, I sure as heck am not making a literal bucket of glaze! Still, once you've had the full glaze experience, it's hard to go back. It takes some patience, but you really can encase a cake in glaze without the bucket.

The first incarnation of this cake used peanut butter chips. My mother dug them out of the fridge and asked if I could use them up. Sure, I say, why not? Chocolate and peanut butter, great! Or not. Some people loved it, gummy though the texture seemed to us. Maybe it's a guy thing. Those who loved it were all male. We preferred the second version with plain old semisweet chocolate chips. Yes, I made two of these in two days.

This is a truly easy cake. You don't need anything fancier than a whisk, which was part of the plan since my mother doesn't have an electric mixer. It's also measured by volume since she doesn't have a scale. And yes, we do have ovens in Hawaii so it isn't designed to cook in an imu (pit with hot rocks); it's Kahlua the liqueur, not kalua like pig.

Chocolate Kahlua Bundt Cake
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 Tablespoon cornstarch
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1-1/2 cups water

1/2 cup Kahlua liqueur
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 Tablespoons white vinegar
3/4 cup chocolate chips (or peanut butter chips if you're adventurous)
1 recipe Kahlua Glaze

Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour a Bundt pan very well.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, cornstarch, baking soda, salt and cocoa. In a separate bowl, whisk together water, Kahlua, oil and vinegar. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and whisk until well combined. Pour into prepared pan. Sprinkle chocolate chips over the top.

Bake until tester inserted in center comes out clean, about 45 to 55 minutes. Cool in pan on rack for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and cool until just slightly warm on rack. Place on serving plate.

Carefully spoon glaze over cake, a little at a time. Use your fingers to spread the glaze over the entire surface, adding more glaze layer by layer until all the glaze is on the cake, encasing it fully. Try to add the glaze slowly enough that you don't waste much dripping onto the plate.

Kahlua Glaze
8 ounces sifted powdered sugar (about 2 cups or, if no scale, half the box)
3 Tablespoons soy milk (or half-and-half, cream, or milk, if that's what you have)
2 Tablespoons Kahlua

Whisk all ingredients together until smooth.

Chocolate Birthday Cake

When I asked J what he wanted for a birthday cake he said chocolate, which he always says. "Well, what kind of chocolate cake?" I ask, "Dense european style, light american supermarket style, Dobash*, chocolate frosting, vanilla frosting, buttercream, marshmallow? Be specific."

"What I really want is a brownie with vanilla frosting."
- crickets -
"Ummm, are you sure? That's different... so... two layers of brownie with vanilla buttercream in between?"

Good thing I double checked. While his mouth said brownie, his brain said cupcake. Like Hostess. With really sweet vanilla buttercream. Yeah. So this is what I created for his birthday. Moist, soft, not-too-sweet but very chocolatey cake. When covered with (to me) a very sweet buttercream in a thin layer it actually works really well.

Chocolate Birthday Cake
44 g unsweetened cocoa, high quality, high-fat (about 1/2 cup)
1 ounce unsweetened chocolate
1/2 cup coffee, very hot
270 g all-purpose flour (about 2 cups)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup coffee, room temperature

3/4 cup plain yogurt

1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
150 g granulated sugar (about 3/4 cup)
150 g light brown sugar (about 3/4 cup)
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened (3 ounces)
2 large eggs

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 9" diameter springform pan.

Combine cocoa, chocolate and very hot coffee, stirring until smooth. In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In another bowl, combine room temperature coffee, yogurt and vanilla.

Cream together sugars and butter. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. Add chocolate mixture, beating to combine. Add flour mixture alternately with yogurt mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture, stirring after each addition. Spoon into prepared pan.

Bake for 20 minutes then reduce temperature to 300°F and continue baking for 20 to 25 additional minutes, until a tester inserted at the edge comes out clean and at the center comes out moist. Cool for 10 minutes in pan then remove to a rack to cool completely.

Cut cooled cake into two layers. Frost between layers and over top and sides as desired. If using this vanilla buttercream recipe, you will end up with a rather thin layer of frosting. For a more typical covering, try 1-1/2 times the recipe, or double for thick frosting.

Vanilla Buttercream
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened (4 ounces)
400 g sifted powdered sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons milk

At low speed of a stand mixer, beat together butter and about 1/4 of the powdered sugar until combined. Add powdered sugar in 3 more additions, beating to combine after each addition. Increase speed to medium and continue beating until fluffy and aerated. Beat in vanilla and milk.


* What is Dobash? It is a dark chocolate chiffon layer cake with a pudding-style chocolate icing, typically with cake crumbs decorating the sides. This is one of those Hawaii things and the only cake I want for my birthday!

Cucumber Spice Cake

We've been pretty good about keeping up with the cucumbers this year but since I haven't made pickles yet, something needed to be done. Since I'd rather bake than cook most days, the creative cucumber dish would be a cake. It's based on a simple eggless, dairy-free cake which handles lots of moisture, perfect for cucumbers. It doesn't really taste like cucumber, just like a moist spice cake.


Cucumber Spice Cake
350 g all-purpose flour (2-2/3 cups)
400 g sugar (2 cups)
1 Tbsp fresh orange zest
2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ginger
1/8 tsp star anise
1/8 tsp mace
1/4 cup canola oil
2 Tbsp vinegar
2 C peeled, seeded, shredded cucumber

Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour a bundt pan.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, zest, baking soda, salt, and spices. In another bowl, combine oil, vinegar and cucumber. Add cucumber mixture to flour mixture. Stir to combine. Pour into prepared pan.

Bake for about 40 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 minutes then remove from pan and cool completely on a rack.

Note - I tried making this with some fresh minced chocolate mint in place of the orange zest. It did not turn out well. J said it really brought out a cucumber taste and I thought it was reminiscent of toothpaste. Not that it stopped people from eating it but mint is not something I'd add to this cake again!