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cakes

on
November 11, 2023

Caramel Apple Cake

This cake began with me flipping through my well-loved copy of Tartine’s first cookbook and finding myself suddenly intrigued by their recipe for caramel apples. Up until then, I had never had a caramel apple. I had never wanted a caramel apple. I had never understood why anyone would want an apple dunked in sweet, sticky goo. But for whatever reason, because my brain is the way it is, I suddenly very much wanted a caramel apple. And not just any caramel apple, but Tartine’s caramel apples.

So… why not make an entire cake to go with it? Let’s break it down:

  • Cake: Lightly spiced cake studded with fresh apple chunks
  • Filling: Italian buttercream whipped with tangy sour cream and honey
  • Outer: Italian buttercream
  • Topping: Tart and buttery apple cider caramel

All together, you get a cake that just bursts with proper apple goodness.

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on
April 13, 2023

Extra Devil’s Food Cake For the Winter

If this seems weirdly out of season, it’s because it is. If you look at the time stamps on this site, it’ll become very clear that I am erratic at best on when I post — and a lot of that has to do with my own personal incompetence, but also because I never knew why I had this site to begin with. Who is it for? What do I hope to achieve? All good questions for life and frivolous “recipe blogs”, though applying that label to hellokelinda.com is rather generous.

The long identity crisis may be finally over, though, as I find myself wishing more and more that I had some sort of archive by which to track my own favorite past creations, be it a towering cake or cozy stew. So who is this for? Me. Or more specifically, Future Me.

 

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on
April 11, 2023

Yellow Cake with Nutella Meringue Buttercream

I had two jars of Nutella in the pantry for some now long-forgotten project, and I came across them over the weekend while digging around looking for a sleeve of Saltine crackers. Saltine crackers were obtained and duly dispatched, but the Nutella whispered its sweet siren song from the depths of my canned and jarred goods: Ammmmmmmmmy…. Ammmmmmmmmmy……..

No good. They had to be gotten rid of.

And by what method did I decide to do this? Making an entire cake just to slather it in some deliciously fluffy Nutella meringue buttercream. And sharing it with my coworkers, of course.

 

 

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on
April 10, 2023

My Favorite Birthday Cake: Yellow Cake with Pastry Cream Filling

I saw this goose candle holder (from Camp Hollow) earlier this year, and how could I resist? He’s even wearing a tiny party hat! I knew the little guy had to take a starring role on my birthday cake this year, and it also gave me an excuse to get a little over-the-top with the decoration.

If you’re interested in doing something similar, you’ll need candy melts for the dramatic swishes (swipe it onto a piece of parchment like you’re a chef plating a fancy sauce), star sprinkles, two piping nozzles (I use a round and a star), and to try your hand at color-matching your frosting with food coloring.

 

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on
February 17, 2022

Black Forest Cake-ish

My friend Katie is celebrating her 30-mumbles birthday and her absolute favorite cake is a black forest cake.

Personal confession: I am indifferent towards black forest cake. I am, at best, lukewarm towards black forest cake, which I suppose is better than my violently-in-opposition-of feelings towards German chocolate cake and hummingbird cake. If I am being paid to create a cake for someone, I will readily put such opinions aside and do exactly what they’ve requested. But since I was baking this cake out of the goodness of my admittedly cold, unfeeling heart, I decided that it was perfectly fine to be just a little selfish. So here is black forest cake-ish: all the basic elements of black forest cake, but done how I would like it.

 

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on
November 20, 2017

rohan’s spiced honey cake

This post is several months late, but you know, it’s a spice cake and those are very winter appropriate (not to mention Thanksgiving appropriate if you want an alternative to pumpkin pie!) so here it is nonetheless. This past summer was the 11th year of my annual reread of Lord of the Rings, and this time my friend Katie joined me. To make it a truly immersive Middle Earth experience, every time we finished one of the books, we’d prepare a themed meal and watch the corresponding movie. For Fellowship of the Ring, we had a dinner of mushrooms that even Farmer Maggot would envy. But for The Two Towers, we wanted something sweet.


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on
April 14, 2017

“One Chocolate Cake to Rule Them All” Cake

Birthday cake, round two: weekend edition. To drag my birthday week out and end it on a high note, my friends and I had a great meal at Oddfellows on Saturday night. I highly recommend that place for any gathering — the service was great and the food and drinks were delicious!


Hello, party people!

I used to go there just for casual lunches and snacks when I still lived in that neighborhood, and it doesn’t hurt that Oddfellows is next to my favorite bookstore in the city, either. Work up an appetite browsing and purchasing new lovely things to read, then pop over next door for a meal — that’s the ideal weekend activity, if you ask me.

But I’m still of the mindset that anything calling itself a birthday celebration is incomplete without cake, so I made something I’ve been meaning to make for a long time: an intensely chocolate cake.


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on
April 5, 2017

Mimosa Cake (Champagne & Grapefruit)

My birthday is today and true to form, I’ve made my own birthday cake. Or rather, I made one to “celebrate all the April birthdays in my office” but who are we kidding, I made this cake for me.

My birthday cake for the last few years has been varying iterations of a fruit and custard cake because it is the best kind of cake in existence and if you disagree you are wrong, but that’s a post for another time. This post is about a different kind of cake, because this is a different kind of birthday. This year, I’m turning 30.


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on
January 29, 2017

“You Are the Morning, I Am the Night” Cake (Chocolate & Vanilla)

Annnnd we’re back to cakes. Did you really think I’d stay away for very long? Of course you didn’t, because you know how I am by now.

A friend was celebrating her birthday, and all celebrations of surviving another year /slash/ shaking your fist at mortality should involve a cake of some sort. So I set out to make one for her, and remembered that a few months ago, she had told me in passing that she loved chocolate cake with vanilla icing.

…or was it vanilla cake with chocolate icing?

Goddamnit.


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on
January 16, 2017

Frootfetti Cake (or Früt/”Fruit”-fetti Cake)

Wait, what’s all this then?? Didn’t I just say one post ago that one of my resolutions was to be healthier? And now there is a goddamn cake recipe here?!

You caught me. I did say that. But then I also decided that healthier doesn’t have to necessarily mean “devoid of cake” because quite simply, a good cake makes me happy. And what’s the point of being “healthy” if I’m just bummed out all the time from the distinct lack of cake in my life? I don’t want to get hit by a bus and have my dying thought be “goddamnit I should’ve eaten that cake, why did I endure six weeks of endless grain bowls.”

So to kick off a year of being healthier and happier, here is a cake. It is not a healthy cake because there is no such thing. A good cake will contain butter and sugar and flour (or some kind of flour alternative at the very least), so might as well just let it be what it is. But if you’re going to treat yourself, why not go big, like with a fun cake studded with Fruity Pebbles “funfetti.” This thing can be part of your very unbalanced complete breakfast once in a while.

An old coworker gave me Tessa Huff’s beautiful book Layered for Christmas, and so this is a riff on the strawberry confetti cake inside. Something I didn’t do for this particular cake (but that I included in my recipe below) is steeping some Fruity Pebbles in the milk before baking with it. I imagine that’d only bump up the cereal flavor by a delicious percent (whatever percentage that might be).


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