This is a family holiday tradition food gift. You can freeze the cake and serve it on Christmas but it is hard to resist for that long. I baked the one in the photograph in a Bundt cake pan with no middle section out of it. It baked at 325F for about 50 minutes instead of an hour. It came out perfectly! The versions below are some we’ve made in the past with regular Bundt cake pans.
dessert
...now browsing by tag
Rum Cake Recipe for Christmas
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011Princess Cake from Gayle’s Bakery in Santa Cruz
Saturday, June 4th, 2011- Gayle’s Bakery in Santa Cruz is pretty large,and when I say large, I mean 10,000 square feet of Bakery, Rosticceria, and Italian Deli. So when you get there, line up and take a number while you decide what to eat-in (fairly large patio with seating area to eat lunch) or take-home. The Princess cake is my absolute favorite birthday cake. I know I’m not alone on this one because after attending baby showers and birthday parties in Santa Cruz, I found out that Gayle’s Princess Cake is many other folks favorite cake in Santa Cruz as well. I am typically a chocolate lover, but this cake … it is truly scrumptious with a vanilla and almond paste kind of flavor with raspberry and cream inside and an unbelievable texture.
- Gayle’s Princess Cake Three layers of vanilla genoise cake ~ layers of pastry cream, raspberry jam & whipped cream inside ~ pastel marzipan shell outside ~ sprinkled with powdered sugar ~ topped with a fresh rose.
Carrot Cake ‘Cupcakes’ with Lime Mascarpone Icing – Thanks Jamie Oliver!
Thursday, April 21st, 2011- Get Creative: Garnish is just a sliver of carrot with parsley as the carrot top.
- Make this recipe into cupcakes for Easter! That is what I am going to do along with a Create-your-Own Deviled Egg Bar for guests to make their own.
This is an impressive recipe because of the combination of the lime flavor and the moist carrot cake. Either I dined with polite folks or they really liked this cake and wanted the recipe. This sparked a conversation about cooks who don’t like to share their recipes. I told them it was fine with me to share this carrot cake recipe because Jamie Oliver had shared it with me!
Jamie Oliver and Sunset Magazine are two that I trust for solid recipes that will succeed on the first try!
Carrot Cake with Lime Mascarpone Icing Recipe from Jamie Oliver
The Penny Ice Creamery in Santa Cruz … in the News!
Monday, January 31st, 2011After frequenting great, creative ice cream shops across the country such as Jeni’s in Columbus, OH, Sweet Action in Denver, and Humphrey Slocombe in SF we are so glad to have The Penny Ice Creamery in Santa Cruz and we look forward to evolving with them.
The Penny Ice Creamery is a great addition to the very limited Santa Cruz-specific ice cream scene. Yes, we have Dairy Queen, Cold Stone Creamery, and numerous frozen yogurt shops (I feel embarrassed for even mentioning those at all in the same article) in SC but there is really only one other ice cream shop that is worth writing home about (there is another in downtown SC that I haven’t tried yet). This of course is the fifty-year old landmark ice cream shop near the boardwalk known as Marianne’s (Macapuno: Creamy baby coconut ice cream is a great flavor). The Penny is a nice contrast to the famous standard Marianne’s and is completely an artisan shop, home-made and seasonal from scratch. They currently use about 2,000 organic eggs a week and organic milk in contrast to most ice cream base which is actually almost always purchased from an outside source (there may only be one other ice creamery in CA that makes their own base as well – Sweet rose in Brentwood – don’t quote me on that). Their flavors are more and more intriguing to me each time I stop in the shop (5 Spice with Fried Peanuts, Banana Toffee, Kiwi Sorbet). Flavors often incorporate other great local goods such as coffee from Verve and Santa Cruz Mountain Stout. Online and on facebook you can check out their daily menu of flavors (a flavor is around no longer than six days but usually lasts 4 days) which means they can offer creative and new concoctions all the time and then once you find one you love … let’s hope they bring it back. They even make their own cones! I am looking forward to some creative sundaes in the future (such as the seasonal classic Spice Tower from Graeter’s Ice Cream).
The chef and co-owner, Kendra, has been a pastry chef for ten years and worked as a Pastry Chef at Manresa in Los Gatos and Bar Tartine in SF before opening Penny Ice Creamery last year.
In addition, The Penny owners were recently in the news for being personally invited to the White House for making a video entitled “How Recovery Act boosted small biz, an ice cream case study”:
Grilled Fruit Kabobs with Balsamic Glaze and Manchego Recipe
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010The balsamic glaze looks like chocolate syrup and the cheese is a bit disguised amongst the fruit and ice cream in this recipe. The disguised ingredients make this dessert feel like a new discovery for the palette!
Grilled Fruit Kabobs with Balsamic Glaze and Manchego Recipe Click to continue »
CSA Food Box # 13: Cast Iron Skillet Dessert Crisp Recipe
Friday, July 9th, 2010What you will need for your Cast Iron Dessert Crisp with any fruit combination:
- Cast Iron Skillet
- Any Fruit (Strawberries)
- Other pantry items: brown sugar, sugar, flour, butter, almonds (optional), lemon or orange zest (optional)
Various Seasonal Fruit Combinations:
- Strawberry-Rhubarb
- Blueberry-Nectarine
- Apple-Quince
- Plum & Peach
- Triple Berry
- Cranberry-Apple
- Blueberry-Peach
- Cranberry-Apple-Pear
Blueberry-Nectarine Crisp Recipe
Recipe from Vegetarian Fresh Food Fast Cookbook
ReadyMade Magazine: Banana Split Ice Cream Cake Recipe
Monday, June 7th, 2010For this dessert, start at least two days before you want to server it! AND, don’t take it to a friend’s home who has a freezer powered by solar. You need a normal to powerful freezer to freeze the dessert properly or should I say thoroughly. So basically, I wouldn’t recommend ice cream cake, where you make the ice cream yourself for the dessert, without a few days to prep it to make sure it’s a “solid” dessert for the party.
This is a whammy of a labor-intensive dessert because you will be making the ice cream, with your ice cream maker, and create the cake part too. However, the flavors in this dessert are worth the work because it is a unique flavor combo! Thanks ReadyMade magazine for your creative Spice Cream Recipes!
Tips for making Ice Cream & Ice Cream Cake:
- Freeze your ice cream maker bowl at least 24 hours beforehand, if not sooner. I’ve made this mistake too many times.
- Test your ice cream maker with a simple ice cream first. The reason for this is that there is room for error with how well your ice cream maker operates and how frozen your ice cream bowl must be to work well. Always store the ice cream bowl in a cool area and freeze it as it is standing right side up.
- Start the dessert even a few days (2-3 days) ahead of time and freeze the ice cream overnight and the cake for a decent amount of time as well once you have loaded it with the ice cream.









































