Queen Elizabeth Cake

This is one of those cakes that when people hear the description,  they say "hmmm interesting " (aka yuck) and after tasting it, can not believe how incredibly delicious it is. I love this cake. I love making it.

I am not posting the recipe, there are many online you can find. Mine lists only ingredients. The cake part is simple but the topping is double cooked.

This one in particular was made for a friend's father who is also a friend. I made it for his birthday, he turned 83.  

Blueberry Crunch Coffeecake

This recipe is from Joy of Cooking. It turned out really tasty on the first try. The recipe calls for sliced almonds, which I didn't have, but I had roasted almonds so I just chopped those up. You mix dark brown sugar with the almonds and sprinkle the mixture in the bottom of a loaf pan. Then spread the blueberry cake batter over top. (The batter is similar to a muffin batter.) When it bakes, the brown sugar and almonds form a crunchy layer. You serve the cake (loaf?) inverted so the crunchy almond layer is on top. Yum!

Karl Pilkington Cake

Last weekend was James's birthday, and we had a nice little BBQ at our house. I made him a chocolate cake in the likeness of Karl Pilkington -- or at least, in the likeness of Ricky Gervais's own portrait of Karl, as seen on the book.

More info on Karl Pilkington, Stephen Merchant, and Ricky Gervais here. We're big fans of their radio show, not to mention The Office and Extras!

The brown and blue part is supposed to be Karl's scarf, but somehow his neck disappeared when I was decorating, so it's not quite apparent. Oh, well! Karl's head looks even more round after being moved to a plate:

Cool Website: Charm City Cakes

A few nights ago, Sheu and I watched the Food Network show "Ace of Cakes" for the first time. I had no idea that the shop featured in the show, Charm City Cakes, is right here in Baltimore! (Ok, we actually live between Baltimore and DC -- but I used to live in Baltimore, and I still work in Baltimore, and Sheu works north of Baltimore, so close enough!)

Anyway, the Charm City Cakes website is fun to explore. Their cakes are truly amazing! They have an extensive photo gallery. Here's the website address -- pretty self-explanatory, heh heh.
www.charmcitycakes.com

I recommend the show "Ace of Cakes", too. It's currently running on Thursday nights on Food Network. It's fun to see how they make these crazy cakes!

Gingerbread Crochet Cake

I made this cake more than a year ago, for my friend Christy's birthday. It's one of my very favorite cake recipes: Applesauce Gingerbread from Joy of Cooking (1997 edition). The only change I make to the recipe is to increase the amount of each spice.

For Christy's cake I made a powdered sugar icing with orange extract for flavor. The orange goes well with the ginger flavor of the cake. Christy likes to crochet, so I added a real crochet needle to the top and tried to make the colored icing look like yarn. She got to keep the needle, of course. :-)

I've also made Applesauce Gingerbread with cream cheese icing...verrrrry yummy. It's also good with just a sprinkling of powdered sugar instead of icing.

Myriam has made some AMAZING cakes in the past--maybe she'll post some photos of her creations. hint hint

CakesCat SweetCat