Lemon Poppy Seed Cake with Haskap Buttercream

So.  Again.  It’s been much too long.  I feel like that’s the song I always sing.  But, life gets ahead of you.  Plans change.  Seasons change.  And before you know it, almost a year has gone by since you’ve done a single, solitary blog post!

How can this be?!

I’ve been doing some thinking in my brain (it’s really hard to make sense of what goes on there sometimes).  I’m thinking about evolving the blog a bit, which is why it has gone untouched for awhile.

Also, my dinosaur of a laptop died.  😦  Wahhhhh.  A new one will hopefully be on the list of purchases for the next few months.

Let’s get down to business.

There is good reason for this post today.  The cake – immaculate.  It looks soooo good.  It tastes even better!

I couldn’t let another recipe go by, unposted.  Especially this one.  Cake is kind of pound-cakey.  With a hint of lemon and lots of little poppy seeds, making for wonderful crunch.  The frosting!  It is smooth and sweet (like super sweet), with a haskap berry tang.

I guess I should touch on haskap berries!  They’re high in anthocyanins, vitamin C, phenolic compounds and other antioxidants.  To me, it sounds like blueberries on steroids.  They’re a bit more sour than blueberries, and but are slightly more mellow.  Not sure if that makes sense…  My hubby says that they taste like a mix of blueberries and kiwi.  (But he’s weird, so who knows what they taste like to normal people!)

There’s a company in our area called Haskapa.  I used the jam that they sell in the buttercream.  🙂

There’s your lesson pour la jour.

Lemon Poppy Seed Cake

This recipe has been adapted from a recipe by Oh Honey Bakes .

• 1 cup, plus 2 tbsp butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 3 tbsp poppy seeds
• 1½ c buttermilk, or 1 1/4 cup milk with 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 tbsp lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350F.  Grease and flour two 9-inch cake pans.

Beat the butter and sugar together until they’re nice and fluffy (and yummy).  Add the eggs, two at a time, and beat well.  Add vanilla and lemon juice.

Mix together dry ingredients.  Alternate buttermilk and flour mixture, and mix until batter is light and soft-looking.

It’s really as easy as that!

Bake for 20 minutes, and then check every 3 minutes for up to 12.

Let cool in the pans for 10 minutes, and then turn out onto a rack to cool completely.

Haskap Buttercream Icing

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2-3 heaping tbsp haskap jam (depending on preference – I used 3)
• 2 tbsp milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 4 cups icing sugar

Beat butter until creamy.  Add in jam and vanilla.  (You can always add more jam in later, if you want more yummmmmy taste.)

Alternate icing sugar and milk, until you have a nice, rich buttercream.  If it seems to runny, add more icing sugar. If it’s too thick, add some more milk.  Again.  Super easy.

Frost cake as you wish!  (With ALL the icing!)  Or leave some in the bowl to eat as a snack.  You will need a glass of milk.

Enjoy!

 

To the kids!  I couldn’t post after almost a year and not include some kids pictures, so here they be!

Jude – The Easter Egg Fiend

 

Cael – enjoying a nice sunny day. (Which are few and far between.)

Briar. Growing up so much!

Fondant and a Wedding Cake

Spring is here (for today anyway)!  It’s sunny and a high of 12C.  Not warm to some of you, but it feels pretty great to me!

So this has been a long time coming.  I’ve been meaning to post it since early December, but of course, haven’t.  A friend of ours got married, just a small, very quaint wedding, and she asked me to make the cake.  Numero dos on the wedding cakes for me.  First one was for a friend in August, but that one was with buttercream.  This was my first attempt at fondant [EVER], and I made the fondant myself from scratch.  Which was pretty sweet, slightly nerve-wracking, and yummy!  I liked the taste quite a bit more than pre-made, bought fondant.

I used a pound cake recipe for the cake, and made 4 layers (2 bigger, 2 smaller).

Then I made a peanut butter cream filling for in between layers.  Coated it with buttercream, and then layered the fondant on top.

Then decorated with blue coloured buttercream.  It was quite the process, even for a small cake.

Marshmallow Fondant Recipe

You can find one very similar to the one I used at HowDoesShe.  Check it.

{Daddy and baby strutting their hats.}

Wedding baking

I just thought I’d do a little post on the baking I did for my friend, Ivy’s, wedding.  It was in August, so this post is a tad late in coming.  But better late than never!  …Right?

Warning – there are going to be many photos in this post!  🙂  Enjoy!

She asked me to make her cake (I was honoured… and VERY nervous), and to make & decorate 50 cupcakes.  So I said sure!

It was a slightly crazy week.  We had decided to start ripping apart our bathroom, so all that was (… and still is) functional in our bathroom, was our toilet.  Bathtub gone, sink gone.  New drywall in, and floors and walls getting ripped up.  Window (which makes me cry to think about) ripped out (it was the only way to fit a shower in…).  And the groom stayed with us for the week before the wedding.  And then one of the groomsmen for a few nights.  On couches/the floor.  Poor guys.

Plus, of course, there were wedding preparations, rehearsals, spending time with the bride (as I hadn’t seen her for months!), and all the other routine things that happen everyday in my life.  Like, work, baby, family, cleaning, cooking, being preggo, etc, etc, etc.  It was actually a really great week.  I was exhausted by the end of the wedding, but it was definitely worth it.

So, here are a few pictures of the cake – it was based off of a cake we found on Pinterest (of course).  Ivy’s wedding colours were a mustardy-brown, seafoam green, and cream/white.  They turned out beautifully together, and the cake followed the theme.

It was a three-layered cake.  Two chocolate layers, sandwiching a vanilla layer.  With a mocha custard in between the bottom layers, and a deep, dark chocolate buttercream between the top two layers.

 

Then.

Buttercream frosting.  Seafoam, of course.  I got the perfect colour…  somehow.

Here is the imperfect crumb coat.  Good colour though, eh?

And now onto the details.  Also imperfect, but I wasn’t aiming on perfection.  So we’re all good.

Keep in mind – I was doing this the night before the wedding…. late.  And tired.  So.  I think it went fairly well considering.  I was almost expecting a breakdown and a spoon or two being launched across the kitchen, tears, screaming….  but I got it done.  First try.  And pretty happy with it too.

Just one more shot of the cake, I promise.  Then we’ll move onto cupcakes!

So, for cupcakes, we went with chocolate and white.  Simple.  50 of ’em.

 

Frosted with chocolate, seafoam, and coral buttercream.  Except in this buttercream, I used half shortening, half margarine.

I didn’t get any awesome pictures of the decorated cupcakes.  This will just have to do.

 

Here’s a picture of the lovely bride and her new beau, with her family, on the wedding day!

 

And some pictures of my little family (the lighting wasn’t great in the church at the reception, but they turned out pretty great anyhow).

 

Did I mention that I was a bridesmaid?  Great dress huh?  Cute little boy and handsome hubby too.

And at last – a photo of my baby bump.  This was at about 20 weeks.  I’m 26 weeks along now.  And bigger.

The dress did a great job of covering it.  Nobody would have even known I was pregnant unless I pulled it in tight below my stomach.

And last, but not least:

Baby and Mommy.

Thanks guys – hope you enjoyed!  Later days.