Miss Muffet and Chai Spiced Crumb Cake April 29, 2009
Posted by Dorothy in cake, information.Tags: baking mix review, boxed baking mix, chai spiced crumb cake, cinnamon, coffee cake, gourmet baking mix, miss muffetts baking mixes, streusel, sugar glaze
8 comments
I know a lot of people can’t stand boxed baking mixes, but I have always had a (very small) soft spot in my heart for baking mixes, as that’s what we all grew up eating. It tastes like childhood! But boxed baking mixes always tend to bore me a little bit, because they’re usually just yellow, white, chocolate, lemon, or strawberry mixes with an artificial boxed taste. I’m always adding a ton of mix-ins to boxed mixes to try and muffle that artificial taste. And then after you bake the cake from the mix, you still need to frost it. Of course, you could buy an accompanying canned frosting and frost your cake mix cake with that. OR… you could try a gourmet cake mix from Miss Muffet! I was so excited when I stumbled across this site, because they have all sorts of fabulous mixes you only dream about! They have everything from Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes, to Graham Streusel Cake with Glaze, to Nutrageous Blondie Brownies, and even Chocolate Red Wine Cake! All of the mixes come with all the components (cake mix, frosting/glaze mix, streusel/add-ins, etc) to make your fancy dessert.
I was superdelighted to receive my Chai Spiced Crumb Cake with Sugar Glaze in the mail. All the mixes are packaged supercute, in brown paper bags with a mouthwatering picture of the dessert gracing the front of the bag. My Chai Spiced Crumb Cake mix had six components: cake mix, powdered sugar, streusel, crumb topping, walnuts, and honey. All I had to do was add butter and water and then mix it all together! Very easy, unfussy, and didn’t even require eggs like most boxed mixes do. The crumb cake was composed of chai spiced cake, with a cinnamon streusel middle, a crumb walnut streusel topping, and sugar glaze.
This mix made a nice, big, crumb cake – 13×9x2″ all for $8.25, which is a pretty good deal to me. That’s just a little more than how much it would cost me to buy an artificial tasting plain jane boxed mix and artificial tasting canned frosting, any way.
And how did it taste? This cake was SO delicious! This did not taste like a cake mix at all; to me, it tasted like those fresh baked coffee cakes you get at cutesy cafes and corner shops. Especially warm, with that yummy sugar glaze dripping down the sides… I actually gave a piece to a little 9-year old and he told me it was the best cake he had ever eaten! The cake was supermoist, and stayed that way for 3 days (that’s how long it lasted).
This is a great mix, especially if you want to make a more complicated dessert but don’t want to do it from scratch. I definitely recommend these mixes for everyone!
Food Freebies for This Week! April 25, 2009
Posted by Dorothy in free stuff.Tags: flame grilled, free chicken, free el pollo loco, free food, free kfc, free pretzels, free restaurants, free stuff, freebies, kentucky grilled chicken, national pretzel day, restaurant freebies
1 comment so far
Okay, here is a roundup of the free food out there for this week:
April 26: Free soft pretzels all day at Pretzelmaker and PretzelTime bc its National Pretzel Day!
April 27: Free KFC – stop in at your local KFC and get some new Kentucky Grilled Chicken!
April 28: Free El Pollo Loco’s – 2 pc flame grilled chicken, 2 tortillas, and fresh salsa!
No coupons necessary for the above offers; just go to the store! Enjoy!
Have Your Cake and Eat It Too! April 22, 2009
Posted by Dorothy in cake, free stuff.Tags: cake mania, cooking mama, dance dance revolution, ddr, free stuff, free video games, kingdom hearts, maple story, mmorpg, ps2, ps3, sandlot, sandlot games, square enix, video games, wii, xbox
9 comments
I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it on the blog before, but I love video games. I’m probably the girliest person you’ll ever meet, but I have (secretly) loved video games all my life! I’m a big fan and avid player of Kingdom Hearts (on Playstation), Dance Dance Revolution (DDR), Cooking Mama (on Wii), and Maple Story (online), Hello Kitty (online and PC). I even interned for video game marketing for awhile when I was still in school, which was superfun as I got to spend all my time playing games and reading game forums and new game news. While I was working there, I remember getting press releases for a game that really caught my eye – Cake Mania!
Of course, I would love anything named Cake Mania, whether it was a videogame or something else, bc I’m just crazy about cake! But this game is quite fun, especially for every dessert obsessee out there who dreams about opening their own sweet bakery. Sandlot describes this game as “a fun, family-friendly game which follows the cooking adventures of baker Jill Evans. After returning from culinary school, Jill discovers that her grandparents’ bakery closed down after a new Mega-Mart opened in town. She starts a new bakery and works her cake-baking magic to help re-open the family business.”
I’ve played a beta version of the first game in the series, but now the series has grown to multiple games with multiple expansion packs. I’m superexcited to play the third one. And if you would like a copy of this sweet game (who wouldn’t?, click here for details.
And if you too are a closet gamer, give me a shout and we can play 
Gluten Free Decadence – a gluten free/dairy free/egg free cake with breakfast toppings April 19, 2009
Posted by Dorothy in cake, chocolate, information, vegan.Tags: breakfast, cherrybrook kitchens, chocolate, chocolate cake, dairy free cake, egg free cake, gluten free, review, strawberries, syrup, vegan baking mix
14 comments
Ace is one of those ”bakers” that only bake with cake mixes and canned frostings. We all know one of those. We have this habit of baking a dessert together whenever we hang out in her gorgeous vintage Town & Country kitchen and then enjoying it over TiVo-ed episodes of Hannah Montana.
baking in the vintage kitchen
Usually, I bake us something simple and sugary, or Ace will whip up one of her boxed cakes. This time, we did something different. We made a fancy (well, fancier than usual, for us) cake mix cake. And this wasn’t the usual cake mix! No Betty Crocker/Duncan Hines/Pillsbury – we used a Cherrybrook Kitchen Gluten Free cake mix! Cherrybrook Kitchen specialize in making baking mixes that are gluten free/dairy free/peanut free/egg free.
Ace and the gluten free cake mix
This was exciting, as Ace had never had a gluten free dessert before, and I’ve never tried a gluten free cake mix before!
The best part about gluten free and dairy free baking? You can eat all the raw batter you want, without any fears of getting samonella from raw eggs!! And its much easier and cleaner to mix together since it has less ingredients.
I really should try to bake gluten free more often. Its so much better for your digestion system than baking with gluten.
gluten free cake with waffle toppings
So how was the Cherrybrook Kitchens gluten free mix? Well… to be honest, it kind of tasted like cardboard. By itself, it didn’t have much flavor and had a strange texture. The only good parts were the chocolate chips scattered throughout the batter, but those were few and far between. We added LOTS of chocolate frosting and all the breakfast toppings we could find in the fridge to save it. We ended up adding strawberries in syrup (waffle topping), fresh strawberries, whipped cream, and chocolate syrup in addition to the chocolate frosting – basically all my favorite breakfast toppings! It was delicious for me this way, but I’m used to gluten free desserts. Everyone else thought the cake was still cardboard-y and weird even with all the added toppings.
I don’t think I would ever buy one of these Cherrybrook Kitchens mixes again… but I haven’t tried any of the other flavors. Maybe those are better. I must try some other brands of gluten free mixes… I hope they’re not all cardboardy. I really like gluten free desserts by scratch, though.
To make this cake, take a boxed chocolate cake mix of your choice and prepare according to directions on the box. Once the cake has baked and cooled, frost it generously with chocolate frosting. Then spoon strawberry waffle topping over it. Add sliced fresh strawberries on top for garnish. Generously decorate with whipped cream and then drizzle with chocolate syrup. Yummy and pretty!
And don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about the Quest! Will post on that later
Dorothy’s Super Delightful Ice-Cream Pie with Everything and Summer Wishes April 16, 2009
Posted by Dorothy in chocolate, ice cream.Tags: chocolate, hot fudge, ice cream, ice cream cake, ice cream frosting, ice cream pie, nutella, pie, samoas, sundae
12 comments
This time of year always makes me wish for summer.
Every time I look out the window, I see the bright, hazy, warm sunshine. But once I get outside, I feel the wind and the chilly 70 degree weather. I want summer weather! I want it to be 85 degrees in the shade, and burning warmth underneath the sunshine. I adore warm weather, because I am one of those sad little Asian girls who are genetically inborn with lame blood circulation problems, and are permanently cold. And this is an extreme problem for me, as I live in dresses and skirts and open-toed heels – all very comfortable during warm weather, but very goosebump inducing when worn in cooler weather.
I adore spring, but I’m getting sick of the wind and chills (watch, in three months I’m going to be sick of summer and wishing for fall, haha). I adore summer slightly more than spring, because (other than the warm weather) usually summer means traveling to asia. But not this year! This year I’ll just have to enjoy summer without the traveling. But there’s still lots to enjoy – everyone wearing bright colors, the playful atmosphere, Disneyland with trillions of supercute screaming toddlers, the sparkling nights, the ice-blended drinks…I could go on and on, but I think I’ll stop at.. the Ice-Cream!
I think everyone here knows how much I love ice-cream. I just love it! I like ALL kinds of ice-cream, and I do mean all kinds, including sugar free ones, low-fat ones, supersuper fattening ones, plain ones, ones from asia, ones from europe, ones off the street, vegan ones, ones with crazy flavors…i love them all! It just has the perfect melting consistency that, when combined with the right conditions, that no other dessert can compare to.
Since I am dreaming about summer, I need a dessert to match that dream – an ice-cream pie! The ice-cream symbolizes the coming summer, while the pie part makes it a “cooler weather” type of dessert. I had all kinds of fun stuff lying around in my pantry, so I just threw it all into the pie (getting my pantry spring cleaning done!). This is a whateveryouwish pie, so toss in anything you like!
Dorothy’s Super Delightful Ice-Cream Pie with Everything She Wishes
1 ready made chocolate pie crust
hot fudge topping, warmed (enough to cover the bottom of the pie crust)
3/4 gallon leftover ice-cream of your choice (I used Dreyers’ Samoas), softened
4 Oreos, crushed
4 mini chocolate souffle cupcakes, cut into fours
Nutella
How to Assemble:
- Spread warmed hot fudge topping over the bottom of the pie crust
- Mix Oreos and chocolate souffle cupcakes into softened ice-cream, Coldstone’s style
- Spoon ice-cream over fudge topping
- Leave in freezer to set, approx. 25 mins
- Frost pie with Nutella (as much as you want!)
- Freeze to set frosting
- ENJOY!!!
Now I’m going to go eat this pie and wish for summer. What are you wishing for?
