Week #18 is Key lime pound cake!  I created this one for the second winner of my little competition back over Easter weekend.

In the spring time citrus just feels right with its bright and fresh flavors.  This cake, I believe, hit the spot!  I searched on pinterest of course for help on the recipe, and I found this gem on theirreverentkitchen.com!

Key lime pound cake (for Wendy Tate and her family!)

Ingredients:

•  4 sticks butter, that’s 1 pound, room temperature
• 3 cups sugar
• 6 large eggs, room temperature
• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup fresh key lime juice
• 1/4 cup evaporated milk, (I always keep a good number of those small, 5 ounce cans in my pantry.)
• 4 teaspoons key lime zest
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 300°.  Cover inside of 10 inch tube pan with non-stick spray.  My pan is 10  1/2″ and it’s just fine.  Set aside.
• Using a stand-up mixer or electric hand-held, beat the butter well until light in color and fluffy.  Add the sugar and again beat well for at least 5 minutes.  I use a stand up mixer and beat the mixture 10-15 minutes.  I don’t like a “grainy” cake.
• One at a time add the eggs and beat only until the yellow disappears.
• Stir juice, milk, zest and vanilla together.
• Now mixing by hand, gradually flour to the butter-egg mixture alternating with the key lime juice and milk mixture.  Begin and end with flour.  Mix well but just enough to incorporate all ingredients.  You don’t want a tough pound cake!
• Pour evenly into the tube pan and tap pan on the counter to loosen any air bubbles.
• Bake for 1 hour and 45 minutes or until cake tester comes out clean.
• Cool on a cooling rack for 20-25 minutes in the pan then transfer from pan to cooling rack and allow to cool another hour or until completely cool.
• When it was cooled, I mixed a little lime juice and confectioners sugar and painted it all over the outside of the cake with a pastry brush.  I feel like this gives it a little extra zing!
• After glazing the cake I sprinkled with lime zest and white sugar crystals.

Unlike previous cakes – I tried to follow this recipe exactly (with the exception of the last step).  Now the glaze, on the other hand, I just monkeyed with the following ingredients until I found the consistency I wanted.

Glaze:
4 oz cream cheese, confectioners sugar(a cup maybe?), lime juice (a tbsp or two), and cream (a tbsp?) and maybe a drop of lemon extract. – I whipped these ingredients until they were smooth and ready drizzle over the cake.

I was thrilled to hear back from sweet Wendy and her family!  They thoroughly enjoyed the cake!  Here’s a bit of what she said:

Our family’s favorite season is summer, &, if you ask us what summer tastes like, we’ll probably say “Summer tastes like key lime!” Oh, we might say it tastes like ice cream and watermelon & lemonade too, but key lime is always a main ingredient of summer!

And your cake? It hit every note just right… it was bright & lovely… the perfect springy taste that says, “Summer is on the way, y’all!!”

The cake was packaged perfectly… a delicious gift!

The cake was a good texture & so “clean.” I loved the lightly browned edges.

And the cream cheese icing glaze was marvelous!! It was Beth’s favorite part. In her words: “I could eat the icing w/ a spoon!”

The icing was a wonderful blend of sweet-tart, & the lime zest & sugar crystals combined in my mouth in a tasty little explosion of flavor!

Thank you, Wendy for such and kind and glowing review!  🙂

On a whim last week, I had a little contest offering cake to friends who could guess what kind of cake I made for Easter on week #16.  Well, wouldn’t you know, two friends guessed pretty close right within a few minutes of each other.  So, I am giving both of them a cake, one this week and one next week.

This week’s cake is a Turtle cake – gooey with chocolate chips, caramel sauce and sprinkled with pecans.      I think it is going to be super yummy, and I can’t wait to hear back from Amanda how it turned out!  But, I don’t believe you can go wrong with chocolate and caramel and nuts, can you?

Here’s the recipe:

Milk Chocolate Turtle Cake.

( I’m designating milk chocolate, because more often than not I use dark chocolate – so this is a significant difference.)

Ingredients:

Swiss Chocolate cake mix (duncan hines)
4 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup mini chocolate chips (I’ve started using mini chocolate chips almost exclusively so that they don’t sink to the bottom of the cake.)
1/4 cup Hershey’s chocolate syrup (from the can)

for garnish:
extra Hershey’s syrup and caramel sauce
chopped pecans

Instructions:

Beat all ingredients together for 2 minutes on medium high.  Pour into prepared bundt pan. Bake at 350 for 45-50 minutes.

When the cake has finished baking, and has cooled for 15 minutes, poke holes in the cake (still in the pan, I use chopsticks) and slowly pour more chocolate syrup over the holes, using a spatula or spoon to help the syrup go down into the cake.

When the cake has cooled another 20 minutes or so, dump from the pan.  After the cake has completely cooled, paint hershey’s syrup all over the outside of the cake.  Then drizzle caramel sauce all over the top of the cake and sprinkle with chopped pecans.

PS:  I heard from Amanda and she said it was wonderful.  Disappeared in four days!  Now that’s what I like to hear!

Week 15 was a bit of a gamble.  I didn’t really have anyone to bake for, so I decided to test something that I was considering baking for a wedding shower brunch in a few weeks.     My idea was to create A bundt cake that was like having a cherry cheese danish.

What came out of the oven was pretty yummy – but it wasn’t totally what I was hoping for.  The cherry and the cream cheese all sand to the bottom of the cake while baking.  So, I’m still thinking about how to try again, and what to differently.  I’ll be sure to let you know how it turns out, if and when I complete a re-do.  I know for sure I’d do a cream cheese topper, possibly with more cherries too!

For now, here’s what it looked like!

Cherry cheese Danish cake

Ingredients:

Golden cake mix
4 eggs
½ cup oil
1 cup milk
cherry pie filling
small cubes of cream cheese (about 4 oz.)

Instructions:

Prepare your pan with baking spray.  Mix ingredients (except the cheese cubes and pie filling) on medium for 2 minutes.  Pour half the batter into the pan.  Scoop cherry pie filling around the center of the pan.  Then pour rest of the batter to cover the pie filling.  Take the cubes of cheese and scatter around on the dough.  ThenBake at 350 for 45 minutes.

I set out to experiment with how to make a Strawberry Buttermilk Bundt cake.  It was kind of  an idea for a  “breakfast-ish” cake.  Seriously – I’m always looking for reasons to eat cake for breakfast.

It isn’t quite strawberry season, so I used ingredients like strawberry jello and strawberry jam.  And look, I enjoy a cake from scratch, but I’m not afraid to work at doctoring up a cake mix either!

The first go-round I used too many heavy ingredients and the cake sank about halfway through baking. You can see in the photo of the slice, how it indents – that’s where it sank.   I was terribly disappointed because I was supposed to share this cake with friends!   But, let me tell you!  It was very rich and moist!  My family loved partaking in my unfortunate mistake!

Strawberry buttermilk part 1 (fail)

Ingredients:
White cake mix
1 small Strawberry jello box
Four eggs
½ cup yogurt
½ cup buttermilk
½ cup jam
½ cup oil

Instructions:
Prepare bundt pan with baking spray.  Mix ingredients together, on medium speed for 2-3 minutes.  Bake at 350- for 50 minutes.
This cake sank while baking, so, I won’t be sharing this one with friends!

Here’s what I whipped up instead!

Strawberry Buttermilk Bund (part 2)

Ingredients:
White cake mix
1 small Strawberry cream pudding box
4 eggs
½ cup buttermilk
½ cup oil
½ cup jam, heatened to thin, drizzled/ swirled into  the cake batter.

Instructions:
Prepare pan with baking spray.  Mix ingredients (not including the jam) at medium speed for 2-3 minutes.  Pour batter into pan, then gently swirl jam into batter.  Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

This cake turned out much more soft and lightly moist, but not nearly dense as the first cake.  My friends enjoyed this version of the cake, and I did too!  I might make this one again… I certainly will keep trying this idea once strawberries are in season.

A really long time ago, I’m gonna guess around 15 years ago, when we were still living in the Beaver Creek apartments on Hixson Pike, I bought a Family Circle Magazine.   In that magazine was a recipe for Carrot Cake, which I made, and have made many, many times since.  It is a keeper recipe,  a family favorite for sure, because it is has the best balance of fruit and nut flavors, and because it has a texture you can not mess up.  Not too dense, not too firm – the crumb is just right!

Well, I decided to try making it in a bundt pan for the first time, in honor of my mom’s 70th birthday – because she loves carrot cake!  But, I didn’t just make carrot cake for this special occasion!  I decided to borrow an idea from another recipe and add a cheese cake filling inside the bundt!

I can assure you cake #9 was a huge success! And, my mom mentioned to me today that the cake, several days now after her birthday, was even better with time – it remained moist and delicious!  If you love cheesecake, and carrot cake, you don’t want to miss this recipe!

Carrot Cake with Cheesecake filling.

Cake Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon all spice
1/4 tsp  nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
4 eggs
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 large carrots, finely shredded (about 1 1/2 cups)
1   8 ounce can crushed pineapple in juice
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup toasted coconut

Cheesecake Filling Ingredients:
8 oz full fat cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Cream Cheese Frosting Ingredients:
4 oz cream cheese, softened
2 tablespoons butter, softened
4 tablespoons pineapple juice (pineapple juice?)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
heavy cream as needed, for desired consistency
2 cups powdered sugar, sifted

Instructions:
Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Coat the bundt pan with cooking spray (I use pam with flour).

In a medium-size bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon and salt. In a large bowl, beat sugar, oil, eggs and 1 1/2 teaspoons of the vanilla until blended. On low speed, gradually beat in flour mixture until smooth. Stir in carrots, pineapple with its juice, nuts and coconuts. Spoon two-three cups of the batter in the bottom of the bundt pan.

Cream together the cheesecake filling ingredients, softened cream cheese and sugar first, then add the other ingredients .  Using an icecream scoop, gently scoop the filling around the center of the bundt pan, being careful to not allow the filling to spread out touching the edges of the pan.    Then carefully poor the remaining carrot cake batter over the filling.

Bake the cake at 350 for 45 minutes, then lower the temperature to 325, cover the cake with foil and bake it for another 15-20 minutes.  When the cake has cooled for 20 minutes, remove it from the pan to cool completely.

Make the frosting when the cake is completely cooled.  Whip the ingredients together to the desired consistency – and then pour over the cake.