Let Them Eat Cake

My, my, my… I haven’t posted in quite awhile. Granted, I have been extremely busy with the holidays and finals, but I found out that I do have some kind of following on this blog and should not disappoint the people that actually read it (thank you for those who do!). Although I have been busy, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been cooking, baking, and going out to eat. Quite the contrary! I actually have a lot to blog, but rather than put it all in a super long entry that no one should have the patience to read, I’m going to break it down. I’ll to be posting multiple entries in the next few days. Each entry will focus on a certain theme so my writing will be more cohesive than normal! With that being said, my first of many entries this week…

- - - - -

Like the title? In the past couple of months there have been a couple of occasions where I needed to bake a cake. The first was my roommate’s birthday. Now Miss Samantha is one of my closest friends at USC and quite a special girl indeed. She’s the most put together person in my apartment, yet she’s not afraid to bust a move when we have random dance offs in the bathroom. I think she’s really from the period of Jane Austen and poofy gowns (When’s that? 1800’s?). I figure she time traveled in Doctor Who’s TARDIS. Anywho, I thought I should bake what the girl loves best: red velvet cake. She especially loves the red velvet cake from Lemonade, but I thought I would take a crack at it. Result? Turned out pretty well! It was dryer than the cake Lemonade has, but all in all not too bad. It wasn’t as deep red as I would have liked though. I used the whole red food coloring bottle and it still wasn’t enough! The cream cheese frosting was super yummy and I could help spoon feeding myself the leftover frosting after the cake was all done. My good friend Cristin also helped! She’s quite the baker herself and we plan to have many more baking escapades in the future. Now, I’m not a great judge of red velvet cake. According to Sam and other friends’ comments, the cake was good. Now I say I’m not a great judge of red velvet cake not because I’m bias of my own baking, but because it confuses me. RED VELEVET CAKE CONFUSES ME. You see, most flavors come from something natural. I can eat a grape flavored Jolly Rancher and say it tastes like a grape. However, red velvet is a whole different thing on its own. It’s like chocolate—in fact, it has cocoa in it—but it’s not chocolate cake. And what’s the red coloring for? It’s just for aesthetic reasons, but it throws me off because I assume I should taste cherry or strawberry. I do like red velvet, but I find my eyebrows scrunched together trying to figure out what I’m eating.

Now the next cake-ish thing I got to make were key lime cheesecake bars. My discipler, Kelsey, is the sweetest, most adorable and joyful woman I know. As a going away present (she graduated this winter and is going up to NorCal to get married and start a new life!), I baked her something she pinned on her Pinterest (if you don’t have an account now, you are missing out). I remember her showing me the different things she pinned on her wedding board and one of them were key lime cheesecake bars. I kept a mental note of that and decided to make it for her going away party. After spending sometime with my good friend Google, I finally found the original recipe. However, the website’s instructions were super confusing and I didn’t really trust the recipe. As a result, I combined the original recipe with another cheesecake one I found on Punchfork to make my own (if you’d like the recipe, comment with your email and I’d be happy to send it to you!). The original recipe called for a marble look, but I prefer the leaf design I made. It’s more orderly and dainty, I think. The bars were a hit and I was just so delighted to see Kelsey’s smile and hear her ask for multiple helpings. 


*I have no idea why, but blogspot won't let me upload my key lime cheesecake bar pictures as the collage-thing I made. So, this will have to do...