bounty chocolate: icing

Showing posts with label icing. Show all posts

Showing posts with label icing. Show all posts

Back from vacation with fresh orange pound cake with passion fruit icing

Hey, everyone!

After a couple of weeks on vacation I am back home, tired and immensely happy. I haven’t baked in a while but have a delicious cake recipe to share with you today, something I prepared weeks ago and that turned out really good. The passion fruit icing is completely optional: in fact, I personally liked the cake better without it.

Oh, and I’ll be answering your questions and

Vanilla cookie buttons with strawberry icing and being tricked by my memory

I don’t know about you, but sometimes my mind plays tricks on me and I just can’t trust my memory. I was listening to “Never” the other day when my husband asked whose song that was. I told him it was Heart’s and said “remember that band from the 80s formed exclusively by girls?”, but he had no recollection of it. Then I decided to show him the music video, and there was a man playing the drums

Iced little lemon drops and the reasons behind each recipe

Those of us who cook and bake have different reasons for choosing this or that recipe, right? I believe that wanting to eat is the most basic reason, but that is followed by the ingredients available, the seasons, the weather, if we’ve having company or if we’re eating alone... Do you agree?

I add to that list a certain technique I want to learn or improve, recipes with curious names, and

Pistachio doughnuts with rose water glaze

I adore fried food, but living in an apartment I rarely feel like frying things – I try to avoid having the whole house smelling like the dinner we’d just had. Up until a couple of months ago fries had been the exception because both the hubby and I love them, but after trying Annabel’s recipe for oven fries the problem was solved – Joao told me they were even tastier than the original fried

Pineapple and toasted coconut cake + a very tedious movie

Spielberg will probably never be one of my favorite directors, but because I’m still in awe with the fantastic “Munich” I decided to give “Lincoln” a chance. One hour into the film and I was bored to death, one hour and 10 minutes into the film and I was sound asleep. O_O
All I could think was that the Academy Award Daniel Day Lewis took home should be on a shelf at Joaquin Phoenix’s house (

Lemon cornmeal cake with lemon glaze and the book I'll read next

Thank you for your comments on my issue with “The Great Gatsby” – I feel much better now. :)
I already have something else to read, Somerset Maugham’s "Of Human Bondage", a book suggested by my good friend Cristina – I’ll try to balance it with my cookbooks since I don’t plan on stop cooking and baking.

I started cooking when I was very young and my grandmother and my great-aunt would give

Oatmeal maple cookies + a book I never finished reading

I was reading a friend’s blog post about books when I suddenly felt a pang of guilt - I felt guilty because I love to read but haven’t read anything in months because of a book that I started reading but never finished.

It all began last year after I watched the first trailer for “The Great Gatsby” – I deciced to read the book before the movie got released. And then I tried reading it. Many,

Chocolate Victoria sponge cake

This delicious and very easy to make Victoria sponge was the first layer cake I baked in years: after my sister became an adult and started to celebrate her birthday with her friends (and now boyfriend – I am definitely getting old) I had no excuses to bake layer cakes; the hubby and I both like to celebrate our birthdays by going out to dinner, and my brother and I are no longer close as we

Lamington bars - lamingtons for the lazy

People often tell me that they admire me for cooking and baking so frequently, and I reply that preparing food really makes me happy. However, I do have some lazy moments, too, of course, and these bars are proof: I’ve always wanted to make lamingtons but kept postponing it because the thought of baking the cake, cutting it into squares, dipping them in chocolate and rolling in coconut made me

Chocolate whisky cupcakes with peanut butter icing

Every time a new DH magazine issue arrives I go crazy with so many delicious recipes and it’s a tough task to choose which one to make first. This time, however, it was a bit easier: I decided I would only make something if I had all the ingredients home. Since I was out of cream cheese all the gorgeous cheesecakes would have to wait, that way I settled for these cupcakes: tender and deeply

Marbled sour cream pound cake with white chocolate icing

A while ago I nominated Flo Braker and Lisa Yockelson the Queens of Pound Cakes but now I have to add another name to that fabulous list: Alisa Huntsman, who to me was already the Queen of Layer Cakes, kicks ass in other fields, too, and her pound cakes have become favorites of mine, not only because they are insanely tender and delicious but also because her pound cake recipes from this

Fruit mince muffins with eggnog icing

Eggnog is not part of Brazilian Christmas celebrations but everything I’ve made so far flavored as the drink turned out delicious, the sablé rounds and Flo Braker’s cake being my favorites –therefore, I bookmarked Rachel Allen’s muffins the minute I saw them on the book. This fantastic recipe is a keeper, not only because the delicious muffins match eggnog and fruit mince, flavors I love, but

Lemon-frosted pistachio cake

Hollywood is dominated by men, or better, by white men, so I am always glad to watch women deliver great work. Not many directors are women - some of them are really, really talented and responsible for masterpieces, like Jane Campion and Susanne Bier. Now Vera Farmiga, an actress I'm very fond of, has stepped into directing shoes and brings the beautiful and so sensitive "Higher Ground" - a

Maple pecan chiffon cake with brown butter icing

Much the same way I bought Alissa Huntsman's latest cookbook because of her beautiful previous one, I could not wait to get my hands on Julie Richardson's new cookbook since I adore her "Rustic Fruit Desserts" so much - a book full of cake recipes? You know I like that a lot. :D
I first thought of making an angel food cake - because of the insane amount of egg whites in my freezer - but when I

Vanilla cupcakes with blackcurrant preserves icing

Looking for a recipe to use up the jam left in the jar after making this cake, I found an old magazine scrap with a recipe for apple cupcakes with blackcurrant icing; I thought it sounded delicious but did not have any apples around (I’d devoured them in crumble form a couple of hours before, mea culpa). Then I thought that a neutral flavor, like vanilla, would be a good substitute for the

Super tender coconut cake with coconut icing

Since you already know I'm addicted to Suzanne Collins' books you won't be surprised to know that it took me four days to read "Catching Fire" and that I've already started reading "Mockinjay", right? :)
Now I cannot wait to watch the movie, even though knowing that Francis Lawrence is going to direct it doesn't actually thrill me.

"Mockinjay" makes me feel a bit like "The Girl Who Kicked the

Banana and coconut cake with lime icing

I used to love pink as a kid – as I told you a while ago – and I love Lisa Yockelson’s “Baking by Flavor”; therefore, the minute I saw this book I knew I had to have it. Oh, I’m really shallow sometimes, I’ll admit it. :)

This delicious and super moist banana cake comes from Lisa’s very pink and girlish book – if the book was a director it would certainly be Baz Luhrmann. :D

Banana and

Lemon laced gingersnaps

Back in the day when I was little the kids at school used to call me all sorts of names: some were because I was too small, others because I had lots of freckles and also because my skin was too white (kids can be quite cruel sometimes). The two “nicknames” I remember the most are Vicki and Casper – yes, the Friendly Ghost. :S
That came to mind when I baked these gingersnaps: they look kind of

Iced cinnamon snail rolls and when less is more

I hadn’t made cinnamon rolls in ages and this recipe, from Bill Granger’s "Sydney Food", seemed easy and quick to put together. It was – I watched TV all afternoon and yet finished baking the rolls before dinnertime.
I tried to restrain myself and not eat one of the rolls right out of the oven, but ended up giving up the fight after 5 minutes: the warm, tender rolls, deeply perfumed with

Tangerine chocolate marble cake with tangerine icing

I keep telling you about recipes that go wrong and how I do not give up on them. This cake is sort of an example: I made the chocolate orange marble cake from DH mag (#44) and it turned out miserable - an 8-cup capacity pan would not hold that much batter, but I insisted on trusting the recipe. I ended up tossing the whole cake. :(

I decided to make it again – I adore marble cakes – and used a