Happy Birthday Tahini! [a puppy-friendly petit birthday cake]

Last weekend was Tahini’s first birthday! (And this weekend is Martin’s birthday so maybe I should be writing about how much I love him, but alas, Tahini has taken over our lives completely and this is just the way it is now.) A year ago, I had no idea that a fuzzy little puppy friend was what I needed, but here we are, 365 days later, and I’m very best friends with a rascal-y little dog and I’m not mad about it in the least.

If you know me personally, you know that I am not, and have never been, a dog person. They are fine, I suppose, but I never really wanted one. Martin and I had been talking about maybe adopting a furry friend on and off for years, but never actually considered the idea because 1) I am not a dog person and 2) they seemed like they would cramp my style. Then, the pandemic hit. I was already working from home so cutting off all social interaction was pretty isolating and the idea of adding something to our family started looking a little more appealing. I had very specific criteria if this whole thing was going to happen. Our furry friend needed to be small (but not too small), short-haired, a rescue, a puppy, and the name Tahini had to fit because I’d already picked that out. We spent a few days looking online and had just about given up when Tahini’s sweet baby face was posted on a humane center website and 24 hours later, he was mine {ours, I guess}.

This little boy is the sweetest thing in the world and he has been the perfect addition to our little family. He lets me carry him around on my hip like a small child, he snuggles like a champ, loves to curl up in front of the fireplace, and would spend all day sitting in the sun if he was allowed. He gives sweet little kisses, lets me put citrus bandanas on him on a daily basis, loves strawberries and sardines, and I just can’t remember what life was like before he joined our family. So happy birthday to the sweetest little puppy around!

tahini’s dog-friendly birthday cake

And of course, he got his own birthday cake. There are a lot of dog cake recipes out there, but I wanted something that was safe and nutritious for dogs while also being edible and tasty for humans. This petit layer cake is made with bananas, coconut or olive oil, yogurt, honey, an egg, whole wheat flour, and ground oats. The frosting is made of cream cheese, a bit of honey, and of course, tahini. He loved it (because he loves every piece of food put in front of him) and the humans enjoyed it too. :)

Yield: makes one 5" petit layer cake

Author: Anna Ramiz

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Tahini's Birthday Cake

Prep time: 30 MinCook time: 25 MinTotal time: 55 Min

This petit layer cake is naturally sweetened with bananas and honey and is perfect for both our furry friends and their humans.

Ingredients

for the cake

• 1/3 cup (75 g) coconut oil (melted) or olive oil
• 1/2 cup (170 g) honey
• 2 eggs
• 2 large, ripe bananas
• 1/4 cup (57 g) plain yogurt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 1 cup (90 g) old fashioned oats
• 3/4 cup (85 g) white whole wheat flour

for the frosting

• 8 oz cream cheese, softened
• 2 tbsp (42 g) honey
• 2 tbsp (32 g) tahini
• fresh fruit, for decorating 

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350° F and line a quarter sheet pan with parchment paper. Set aside.
2. In the bowl of a food processor, pulse oats until finely ground. Transfer to a medium bowl. Add the white whole wheat flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Gently whisk and then set aside.
3. In a large bowl, mash bananas. Add the oil, honey, eggs, and yogurt and whisk until mixture is smooth and homogenous.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and whisk until just combined and no dry spots remain. Transfer batter to the prepared pan and bake for 20-25 minutes, until cake is golden brown and the sides begin to pull away from the edge of the pan. Cool completely.
5. When the cake has cooled, invert it onto a cutting board and remove the parchment paper. Use a 5” cake ring to cut two circles and two half circles.
6. To make the frosting: Beat cream cheese in the bowl of a stand mixer until smooth and fluffy. Add the honey and tahini and beat until well-combined.
7. To assemble the cake: Place one of the cake circles on a cake stand. Scoop a few tablespoons of frosting on the top and use an offset spatula to smooth into an even layer. Top with the two half-circles, pressed together to make one circle, and add another layer of frosting. Place the final cake circle on top and use the remaining frosting to cover the top and sides of the cake as smoothly as possible. Top with fresh fruit and serve.

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Sour Orange and Tequila Upside Down Cake

I’ve been doing some research lately on SEO, an aspect of internet business I am greatly lacking in. Apparently crucial to running a successful blog, SEO or search engine optimization is a technical, behind-the-scenes area that uses specific words and plugins to help Google easily read your content and push your blogs and recipes to the top of the Google search lists. This is obviously super important for bloggers and recipe developers as people actually need to see and read our recipes in order for us to run a mildly successful recipe writing business. It’s an area that I will admit, I am not strong in, and could use a little extra support in since most of my posts ring in somewhere near the bottom of the billion pages of Google search results, but if I’m being honest, there’s something about the whole SEO optimization thing that feels uncomfortable to me. One of the things I’ve read over and over again is that you should be performing key word searches before creating recipes so that you’re able to see the types of recipes people are already Google-ing and then create recipes based off of that. This idea feels so inauthentic to me! My whole mission in life is teaching people how to elevate their baking, using creative flavors and ingredients that are a bit unexpected and teaching techniques that the average home baker may be unfamiliar with. Often times, this means that the types of recipes people search for are recipes that they are already familiar with like chocolate chip cookies or brownies or something with a peanut butter chocolate combination. Not many people sit down and search “sour orange and tequila upside down cake”, not because they don’t like it or it’s a bad recipe, but simply because it’s a flavor combination that they didn’t know they needed! And I love love love introducing people to baked goods that they didn’t know they needed. But that does put me in a bit of a pickle, because in order to get my quirky recipes out there, I need to get people to my blog because what is the point if no one even ever sees them. Most of this rambling is me processing and getting all my feelings out into words (which is also an SEO no-no— don’t talk about things that aren’t directly related to the recipe, but I’m a real person and since I pay to keep this website up and running, I think I can occasionally go off-topic.) All of this to say, I’m going to continue sharing weird flavor combinations and encouraging you to bake out of your comfort zone, but I may include a s’mores cookie bar (a recipe I’m currently working on so keep an eye out) every now again to keep the internet happy. 

let’s talk about cake

I’ve been planning a version of this Sour Orange and Tequila Upside Down Cake in my head for months. If you know me, you know I LOVE a good upside down cake. I even wrote a whole little e-book discussing how wonderful upside down cakes are at showcasing your fun produce finds—if you don't have a copy, what are you waiting for?! I also saw a picture of a Salted Pineapple and Mezcal Cake on What’s Cooking Good Looking’s site a few months ago and ever since then, I’ve been waiting for my perfect boozy produce cake to arrive. Then I got sour oranges. They are tart and slightly bitter, similar to lemons, but with all of the floral brightness of oranges and they were perfect!

The cake itself is a rendition of a base cake I use in a bunch of different recipes. It’s easy to throw together, doesn’t use a mixer, and can be adapted in all sorts of ways. The sour oranges are marinated in tequila and then cutely arranged into a layer of brown sugar caramel, topped with cake batter and then baked.

When testing this recipe, I was a little frustrated. Everything tasted perfect, but my oranges decided to do a little slip-n-slide action and it did not come out as pretty as I had hoped. I toyed with the idea of re-doing it for photogenic purposes but decided against it for two reasons: 1) I was all out of sour oranges and it’s not easy to get your hands on more. I could have done the cake just as easily with blood oranges or sumo or any other citrus, but I really loved the sour orange flavor and I wasn’t quite ready to give that up. 2) Part of me running this blog is to teach you how to make really delicious desserts at your house and a piece of that is making desserts accessible. If everything that I produce is a work of art and looks flawless, that’s really not realistic to the home kitchen. Home kitchens are where we make really tasty food that isn’t always beautiful and that is a-okay! So I promise you that I am a real person whose oranges don’t do exactly what I want every time. I also promise you that this is a great cake recipe that will produce a great cake in your kitchen, but if your baked goods don’t always look like little airbrushed magazine photos, that’s okay! Keep on baking!

Yield: makes one 9" round cake

Author: Anna Ramiz

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Sour Orange and Tequila Upside Down Cake

Prep time: 40 MinCook time: 40 MinInactive time: 12 HourTotal time: 13 H & 19 M

A citrusy, boozy upside down cake filled with cinnamon, tequila, and brown sugar caramel. recipe inspired by jodi moreno (what's cooking good looking)

Ingredients

for the topping

• 2 sour oranges*, thinly sliced
• 1/3 cup tequila
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 1/2 cup (113 g) unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup (110 g) brown sugar
• 1 tsp kosher salt

for the cake batter

• 1/2 cup (113 g) unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups (240 g) all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup (100 g) granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup (110 g) brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1 cup (227 g) buttermilk, at room temperature
• 2 large eggs

Instructions

1. The night before making the cake, combine sour orange slices, cinnamon sticks, and tequila in a bowl. Cover tightly and let marinate overnight in the refrigerator.
2. Preheat the oven to 350° F. Grease a 9” springform cake pan and line the bottom with parchment paper. Set aside.
3. In a large skillet set over medium high heat, melt 1/2 cup of butter. When the butter is melted, add the brown sugar and cook, whisking occasionally, until the brown sugar is dissolved and the mixture is bubbly and homogenized. Whisk in the salt and then pour the caramel mixture into your prepared cake pan.
4. Remove the orange slices from the marinade and place in an even layer on top of the caramel in the prepared cake pan. Discard cinnamon sticks and save leftover tequila marinade for the cake batter.
5. In a small saucepan, place the remaining 1/2 cup of unsalted butter and cook over medium-high heat, swirling occasionally, for 5-7 minutes, until the butter is foamy and fragrant, and has little browned specks. Set aside to cool.
6. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
7. In a large measuring cup, whisk together buttermilk, eggs, vanilla, and reserved tequila marinade until smooth and well-combined.
8. Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl with the dry ingredients and whisk until the batter is well combined and no dry streaks remain. Whisk in the browned butter. Pour the batter over top of the orange slices.
9. Place your cake pan on a parchment-lined sheet tray to catch any overflowing caramel, and bake for 35-40 minutes, until a knife or toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.
10. Let the cake cool in the pan for 15-20 minutes, until warm enough to handle, and then carefully invert the cake onto a plate. Serve warm.

Notes:

If you can't find sour oranges, don't fret! You can substitute another type of orange, like blood orange, or navel orange or cara cara in this cake. You could even play around with some other citrus (I bet limes would be fun) or even pineapple slices. Orange peels are edible, just make sure that you slice them thinly enough that they are able to soften completely during the baking time.

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Spiced Caramel Chocolate Lava Cakes

It’s Valentine’s Day Weekend and that means really only one thing in the food world—chocolate. I took a poll on my Instagram stories at the beginning of the week asking if people preferred chocolate desserts or pink desserts and I truly don’t even know why I asked. Chocolate is always the winner. My perfect Valentine’s dessert (or honestly anytime dessert) is very simple, very rich, very gooey, and often salted. So basically, little lava cakes.

Back about 7 years ago or so, I pinned a recipe on Pinterest for molten cakes baked in muffin tins. It was from a very random blog, with a poor, artificially lit photo (one that would never stand on my carefully curated Pinterest boards of today!), and my sister-in-law decided to try out the recipe. They were a hit. We made them for party desserts. We made them for my other sister-in-law’s freezer when she had her first baby. I took them on road trips. We just became best friends. And then, like Jessie and her little girl owner in Toy Story 2, we grew apart. Other flashy recipes caught my attention. I started laminating doughs and layering cakes and going to pastry school. Fast forward to about a year ago, I had a craving for lava cakes and set out to sort through thousands of pins to find the recipe, and it was gone! Of course, I had never written the recipe down, so I set out to make my own perfect little molten lava cake recipe and here we are. These lava cakes are the product of lots of testing, lots of suffering through too dry or not-cooked-enough cakes, but we made it friends.

about the spiced caramel

You guys know I can’t just give you a normal, caramel lava cake recipe. It’s against my nature! So here, we spice our caramel with fennel seeds, cardamom pods, and black peppercorns. The spices give a little added flavor contrast to the chocolate and help to cut through some of the sweetness. It’s made using a traditional wet caramel, meaning sugar is cooked with water (which helps prevent that pesky sugar crystallization) until it turns a deep amber color. Heavy cream that has been steeped with your spices gets added, followed by butter and salt. Make sure to chill the caramel well, so that it’s scoop-able when filling the cakes or it will ooze out the sides during baking!

about the lava cakes

The actual cakes themselves are fairly straightforward here. All of your favorite ingredients make an appearance- flour, sugar, brown sugar, butter, eggs, and chocolate. The cakes get baked in muffin tins and the batter can be actually be chilled and baked off later if you want to make them ahead. You can also freeze and wrap baked cakes individually and heat them in the microwave, although you do lose a little of that molten middle. Still chocolate-y and still delicious. They are really the most perfect Valentine’s day treat.

Yield: makes six

Author: Anna Ramiz

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Spiced Caramel Chocolate Lava Cakes

Prep time: 20 MinCook time: 20 MinTotal time: 40 Min

Rich, decadent molten chocolate lava cakes filled with homemade caramel, spiced with cardamom, fennel, and black peppercorns.

Ingredients

for the spiced caramel

• ½ cup (100 g) granulated sugar
• 2 tbsp water
• ½ tsp lemon juice
• ¼ cup heavy cream
• ¼ tsp fennel seeds, roughly chopped
• 8 whole cardamom pods
• ½ tsp black peppercorns
• 1 tbsp unsalted butter
• pinch of salt

for the lava cakes

• 3 oz + 2 tbsp unsalted butter, divided
• 6 oz dark chocolate, roughly chopped
• 1 egg
• 3 egg yolks
• ¼ cup (50 g) granulated sugar
• ¼ cup (60 g) brown sugar
• 3 tbsp all purpose flour
• 2 ½ tsp cocoa powder, divided
• ¼ tsp kosher salt
• ¼ tsp vanilla extract
• spiced caramel, recipe included, chilled

Instructions

to make the spiced caramel

1. Place heavy cream, fennel seeds, cardamom pods, and black peppercorns in a small saucepan set over medium heat. Bring to a simmer and then immediately remove from heat. Cover and let steep for 30 minutes. Strain out the spices and set cream aside.
2. In a medium pot, stir together sugar, water, and lemon juice. Set over medium heat and cook without stirring until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture begins to take on a light brown color. At this point, you can gently stir the caramel. Continue to cook until the caramel reaches a deep amber color.
3. Remove the caramel from the heat and whisk in the reserved heavy cream. (The mixture will bubble up, this is okay, just keep stirring). When all the cream has been added, return it to the heat and cook for one more minute.
4. Remove from the heat again, stir in butter and a pinch of salt and then transfer to a clean bowl to cool.
5. Store caramel in an air-tight container in the fridge for up to a week.

to make the lava cakes

1. Preheat the oven to 425° F. Melt 2 tbsp of butter and divide between six muffin tins. Sprinkle 1 ½ tsp of the cocoa among the six muffin tins and use your fingers to mix the butter and cocoa powder and rub the mixture thoroughly up the sides of the tins to prevent sticking.
2. In a heat-proof bowl set over a pot of simmering water, melt the chocolate. Set aside.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, add 3 oz of butter, sugar, and granulated sugar. Cream for 2-3 minutes, until light and fluffy, scraping down the sides as needed.
4. With the mixer on low speed, add eggs and egg yolks one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add the vanilla extract.
5. Add the flour, remaining 1 tsp of cocoa powder, and salt and mix on low speed until just combined. Stream in the melted chocolate and continue to mix for 1-2 minutes until homogenous. Remove the bowl from the mixer, scrape down the sides, and fold with a rubber spatula to ensure that the batter is evenly mixed.
6. Use a 2 ½ tbsp cookie scoop and place one scoop of batter in each of the prepared muffin tins. Place one teaspoon of cold caramel in the center of the batter, and then top each with another 2 ½ tbsp scoop of batter. Tap the pan gently once or twice to settle the batter.
7. Bake for 8-9 minutes and then let cool for 10 minutes in the pan. Invert and serve immediately with ice cream and more caramel sauce.
8. Leftover lava cakes can be wrapped tightly in plastic wrap and frozen. To reheat, remove from the plastic and microwave from frozen for 30-45 seconds, until warmed through.

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