Results - June Yellow Cake Scratch-Off

A group of scratch bakers over at Cake Central have been having a "Scratch-Off" in which 15 different Yellow Cake recipes were baked and reviewed. 18 bakers participated and a total of 40 votes were cast.

The fifteen yellow cake recipes compared were:

1. Great American Cakes by Barbara Kafka
2. Lita829's Yellow Cake - see page 3 post #9 of CakeCentral.com for recipe
3. Sylvia Weinstock's Classic Yellow Cake - missing link - See comment section for recipe
4. Sylvia Weinstock's NEW Yellow Cake -  missing link - Same as Classic version but with 1 additional cup of milk.
5. Not So Lemon Lemon Cake adapted from Magnolia Bakery - missing link
6. Paula Deen's 1234 Basic 1-2-3-4 Cake
7. Whimsical Bake House Gold Cake - missing link
8. All-Purpose Buttery Yellow Cake - The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook
9. Vanilla Buttermilk Recipe from Sky High
10. White on White Buttermilk Cake
11. The All-Occasion Downy Yellow Cake - missing link
12. Cakeman Raven's Red Velvet Modified by Maryjsgirl into a yellow and lighter cake see post #11 for recipe
13. K8Memphis Golden Cake - see page 3 post #9 of CakeCentral.com for recipe
14. Serious Cakes' Yellow Cake
15. Toba Garett's Moist Yellow Cake

(drum roll please)

The WINNER with 6 votes and final score of 8.83) of Cake Central's June's Yellow Cake "Scratch-Off is ...

Wait,
Wait,
Wait for it...

Sylvia Weinstock's ORIGINAL Classic Yellow Cake !!!!!!!

#1 - Sylvia Weinstock's Original Classic Yellow Cake - with a final score of 8.83
#2 - White on White Buttermilk - 8.33
#3 - Not So Lemon Magnolia Cake - 8.25

Congratulations Sylvia Weinstock's ORIGINAL Classic Yellow Cake !!!

PS: a lot of the testers tried Sylvia's NEW recipe (which is her old recipe plus 1 cup of milk) and 90% of testers considered it a total flop. So be warned.

July's Scratch-Off will be CHOCOLATE CAKE. Yummm. Nothing better than chocolate.

Red White & Blue Cupcakes

What would a 4th of July BBQ be without brightly colored cupcakes?




Don't you just love these Wilton cupcake liners?

I took the easy route for these cupcakes and used a box white cake mix. I divided the batter into three bowls and dyed one bowl of batter bright red and another bright blue.



Then just spoon about a tablespoon of each color into the cupcake liner, bake them for 18 minutes, and voila you get multi-colored 4th of July cupcakes. So cute, and easy too.

The Best Sugar Cookies - EVER

These cookies don't look like much, but they are the best tasting sugar cookies - EVER. I know, I know, you have heard that a million times, but these sugar cookies are really are that good. Slightly crunchy on the outside and soft and cake-like on the inside. Yummm… And the best part is -- they come from a box so they are quick and easy make.


Click HERE for the recipe.

I hope you like them as much as I do.

Peanut's Bed

This is MY bed. Go find your own...

Raspberry Patch Crumb Bars

The temperatue outside is on the rise, so it must be raspberry picking time. I "pick" my raspberries at Sam's Club. Ha, ha, ha. No bugs, no snakes, just a polite swipe of my credit card at the check-out counter and away I go.

Today's offering is from a recipe I found on the Taste of Home web site: Raspberry Patch Crumb Bars. The crust in this recipe was a little different from what I'm used to: you cut shortening into the flour instead of butter. What?! No butter?! I don't know if I'm gonna like this....


Here are the eggs going in. Don't those yolks look bright? I've been using Egg Land's Best lately, and I really notice a difference in taste.


Here is the crust batter going into the pan. I found that the shortening produced a sticky dough, it wasn't "crumbly" in the least. I even added more flour trying to dry it out some, but I never achieved a good texture.



Aren't the raspberries beautiful? The recipe says to toss them with sugar and starch and spread over the crust. Word of WARNING: TASTE your raspberry/sugar mixture to see if it is sweet enough!!! The berries I used were so tart (lip puckering tart) they almost ruined the whole batch of cookies. I had to coat the finished bars with a thick layer of confectioner's sugar to counter the tartness.

Here is the pan right before it goes into the oven. See how lumpy the crumble looks. It's more like cookie dough than crumble. I know, I know, I'm obsessed with the crumble, but it just doesn't look right.


The finished product. The raspberries look bright and refreshing, and oh so summery.


And the crumble?

It looks okay, doesn't it?

It doesn't look lumpy, does it?

Please lie to me and tell me my crumble doesn't look lumpy.

Chocolate Cake with Bittersweet Chocolate Ganache

Today I tried a chocolate cake that was featured on Epicurious: Giant Chocolate Cake with Bittersweet Chocolate Ganache. The cake turned out just a tad dry, but the ganache was to-die-for. I made extra ganache so I could dip strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries. I had a berry dipping fest!

Here is the cake batter…


And that beautiful ganache coming together…



The final cake…



And don't forget those chocolate dipped berries. Heaven.

Oops. I ate them before I could get a picture. Sorry.

What's Blooming - Morning Glory

What's blooming in my garden today? Morning Glories.


Just watch out for the bees. The bees LOVE these things.

Peanut - One spoiled Chihuahua

Heeeeello, I'm finished.
Can someone PLEASE pick me up and carry me inside so my paws don't get dirty.

Oreo Cookie n' Cream Cupcakes

This weekend I was able to kill two proverbial baking birds with one stone. I tested my fifth Yellow Cake recipe from the Cake Central June "Scratch-Off", and I tried to recreate a wonderful looking Cookies n' Cream cupcake I had seen on a blog a few months back.

Here is the end product…



So what do you think?

They look pretty good, but honestly I was a little disappointed in the overall experience. Both the cookies baked inside the cupcakes and the pieces arranged on top of the icing got very mushy and soggy. I know, I know, with all the moisture from the cake batter and icing the cookies were bound to get soft, but I naively expected the cookies to stay crisp. I wanted to bite into that cupcake and hear a satisfying cookie crunch, but instead all I got was a silent squish.

Sigh, some people are never satisfied.

Well, here's how it looks on the inside. Just remember squishy not crunchy.

White on White Buttermilk Cake

This weekend I was able to kill the two provable birds with one stone. I tested my fifth Yellow Cake recipe from the Cake Central June "Scratch-Off" and I tried to recreate a wonderful looking Cookies n' Cream cupcake I had seen on a blog a few months back.

So this time I tried the White on White Buttermilk Cake recipe.

The recipe called for your standard mixing steps. 1) sift the dry ingredients together. I didn't have any fresh buttermilk in the fridge, so I used the powdered stuff. 2) Cream the butter and sugar. 3) Add the eggs and vanilla. 4) Mix in the dry ingredients in three stages alternating with the buttermilk. I mixed the last stage of dry ingredients by hand. 5) Add in the crushed Oreo cookies. I was lazy and didn't feel like getting out the food processor to crush the cookies. I chopped them up by hand, so the pieces ended up being a little large.


Here are the cupcakes all baked up.


Here are the insides. See how big the cookie chucks are. Don't they look good?


One without any Oreos.



The final product.


Overall the White on White Buttermilk Cake recipe was good, but not the best. I found it had a strong buttermilk tang that didn't appeal to all of my tasters (the kids especially). Maybe if I had used fresh buttermilk the flavor wouldn't have been as strong, but either way the buttermilk cake was not a good complement to the Oreo cookies.

I think this will be the last yellow cake recipe that I test from the June "Scratch-Off" challenge. It was a fun experiment, but I'm getting a little burned out on yellow cake. July's challenge will be cheesecake.

Come on July.....