I haven't done a ton of baking in the last few months. Just a few things here and there. This is a Banana-Chocolate Chip loaf cake. It was very moist!
I had a craving to make a coffee cake with crumb topping and filling last month. In my never ending search for good recipes I found a recipe in Baking Illustrated for Coffeecake Muffins! The recipe was supposed to make 12 regular sized muffins but I decided to make mini-muffins and take them to church. I figured it would make about 24 minis but boy was I wrong. These muffins just kept coming and coming. I think I ended up with at least 40! Luckily, they were super yummy and so they were easily devoured by all of the starving college student at church.
Last year (2007) around Christmas time, my Dad and I were at Costco and I saw a beautiful bundt pan for sale. I saw the design for this "Norwegian" style pan a few years ago and have wanted it ever since! Well, evidently my Dad bought the pan for me as a Christmas gift a few days later but forgot to give it to me (hope it's not Alzheimer's setting in!)
A few months ago (December 2008), my Dad called and said that he had a Christmas present from last year that he had forgotten to give me. He told me to remind him for this Christmas (2008) so he didn't forget again! How funny! Well here it is. After years and years of waiting I finally have my own Norwegian Bundt. Isn't the design beautiful?!
To test it out, I used a simple vanilla box cake. I reserved about 1 cup of the batter and added a few tablespoons of unsweetened chocolate powder. After pouring the vanilla batter into the pan, I dolloped the chocolate better on top and then swirled up and down with a knife. The pattern turned out so cool! Thanks Dad!
One of my colleagues (M) is getting married on Saturday so we decided to throw a little surprise party for her at the last minute.
M is getting married in the Grand Tetons National Park so I thought the rustic decorations were perfect! Congratulations M!!!
She wasn't too particular about the design. Her colors were navy blue and yellow (go Orem Tigers!!!). She wanted fresh flowers and multiple tiers. So I drew up a little sketch and she approved.
The next step was to try to visualize how it would all look. I couldn't decide how tall to make the layers but finally decided on about 3.5" each.
My tower fell down very soon after i took that last picture!!!
I figured it would take about 4 batches of RK Treats for the whole cake...boy, was I wrong!!!
It took 7 batches! That's 7 lbs. of marshmallows, 1 lb of butter, and 49 cups of Rice Krispies. (I had to run to the store at 9pm just to get a couple more bags of marshmallows!)
Here are the RK Treat "cakes" all finished. My cake pans are only 2" high so I had to use cardboard collars to get the cakes as tall as I wanted.
It's amazing what a little ribbon and a few flowers can do to make RK Treats look quite elegant! 