Sweet Testing: Aunt Sassy Cake (Pistachio Cake with Honey Buttercream)

It’s official. My Baked obsession has started to infect other members of my family. Recently, when my mother had to make a bday cake for a friend, she told me that she wanted to make something from Baked and asked if she could borrow my cookbook, Baked Explorations. I, of course, was more than happy to oblige, as long as she saved me a piece! The dessert she ended up choosing was Aunt Sassy Cake and I’m so glad that she did because I’ve been wanting to try it every since I got the cookbook! I’m a huge pistachio fan, so anything with this particular nut is right up my alley. The cake itself was light and buttery and reminded me of the cakes my mom used to make when I was little. It has a very homey quality that I love. Oh, and when I say it’s light, I mean that in the sense that it’s not a rich chocolate cake, not light in terms of calories. I mean, it’s a three-layer cake. There is no such thing as a calorie-light three-layer cake! And if you happen to see one, I wouldn’t recommend eating it! Better to eat a small piece of this cake, than a large piece of a factory made “lite” one.

You can find the complete recipe for the Aunt Sassy Cake after the jump.

The Mixing Bowl: Apricot Flaky Scones by Elisabeth Klos

I'm a big fan of breakfast. Eggs, hash browns, pancakes, toast with jam. I love it all! I will admit, though, that on most mornings I'm strictly a granola gal (I don't even put milk on my cereal, although sometimes I'll add berries on top, if I have them on hand!). Every so often, though, I like to treat myself with a little breakfast delight. These apricot scones, brought to us by painter Elisabeth Klos, are the perfect something special for when you have guests over brunch or on days when a bowl of corn flakes just isn't going to do the trick!

Elisabeth Klos is a fantastic painter based in California who also just happens to have a whole series of oil paintings devoted to desserts! It's the perfect combination of art and sweets! I'm really taken with the doughnut painting, but there's also something about that crust on the pumpkin pie piece that I just love!

From Elisabeth: I love painting and drawing sweets/baked goods because they evoke such a warm, nostalgic, happy feeling in me and in most of my customers. The process works something like this: First I do a decoupage under the painting with packaging labels from old flour bags, sugar bags, Hershey bars, etc. (You can see the label in the scone painting - the Gold flour symbol to the left of the scones.) Then I usually do color blocking as a backdrop to a simple portrait of the dessert using oil paint. Sometimes I use a rubber stamp to put text under the dessert.

Elisabeth's paintings are available for sale on Etsy, right here. If you're looking for something specific for the dessert lover in your life, Elisabeth will take custom orders as well. I think it would be really fun to give an avid baker a personal portrait of their most famous dessert: mom's apple pie in oil! You can find contact info and more images on her Web site. Click here to check it out and here to view her blog.

You can find the complete recipe and more of Elisabeth's work after the jump. Thanks, Elisabeth!

Blast From the Past: Pistachio Cake

I have been fixated on all things pistachio ever since I had a delicious pistachio cupcake at Sugar Sweet Sunshine last month. I always loved pistachio-flavored treats as kid (pistachio ice cream was my favorite flavor!), but somewhere along the line I stopped eating it. This may be, in part, because I grew up and started to become interested in trying new things, but also, I think, maybe, pistachio fell off the flavor charts in the dessert world. You really don't see pistachio ice cream that much anymore. Anyhoo, ever since I had that cupcake, I am all about the pistachio again! The mere thought of it makes me drool! Not pretty. So, in order to help curb my pistachio cravings, I decided to make an old school pistachio cake. You know, the kind that requires one box of cake mix and one box of instant Jello pudding mix.

The ingredients and the simplicity of the recipe totally brought me back to being a kid, especially when I smelled that pudding mix for the first time in ages. Such a wonderful, heavenly scent. It was definitely one of those scent/memory moments for me. I will say that making this cake was a bit surreal, not only because of the pistachio flashbacks, but because it required a boxed mix. I really, really, really, don't like boxed mixes. Don't get me wrong. They're yummy and all, but there are just too many ingredients in those things for my taste. I did manage to find a relatively harmless cake mix though, that was also gluten free: Betty Crocker's Gluten-free Cake Mix. The ingredient list on the box is short and recognizable and it was really good! You wouldn't even have known that it was gluten free! So moist and yummy! There could have been a bit more pistachio flavor in my opinion, although everyone else liked it. I've heard that you can buy pistachio paste for more intense flavor. Has anyone tried that?


You can find the complete recipe after the jump.