"cake recipes" news and stories

He's comin' down the chimney, down! In this "after" picture of Santa's present-dispensing binge, there's more than meets the eye. Fluffy Yellow Cake squares for the chimney, fruit tape "bricks," Buttercream-Frosting "snow," and breadstick-and-marshmallow candy "legs and feet" create an edible caketastrophe, Christmas Eve-style.

Recipes and Easy How-To for the Santa Christmas Cake at KitchenDaily.

Tomato Cake. Photo: The Skinny Chef.

Working on a book wherein I was tasked with hiding vegetables in dessert recipes, I discovered that some pair perfectly with fruit. In some cases, the veggies even make ripe fruit taste sweeter. Blueberries go well with spinach, raspberries with beets and strawberries with tomatoes.

I bought a pint of strawberries from a farmer' market recently, along with fresh, stem-on cherry tomatoes. These little guys are already naturally sweeter those usually found in the grocery store, but if your tomatoes are slightly further from the farm, your cake will still be tasty.

Get Jennifer's Tomato Cake with Strawberries and Cream Icing recipe after the jump.

My birthday was this past Saturday, and I forgive all of you for not buying me a gift. I didn't even have any cake! Though the Mexican food and beer and wine I had more than made up for it.

Cake is something I don't eat much of, for both weight reasons and I'm not much of a baker and don't really think about buying one. But a good chocolate cake with a tall glass of cold milk is one of life's great pleasures, and AOL food has recipes for various birthday cakes (scroll down to "Great Cake Recipes") you can try. They go as far as to say that birthday cake has surpassed apple pie as America's greatest guilty pleasure.

I don't agree with that, but there are some good cakes here, including Chocolate Walnut Cake, Kentucky Butter Cake, Linzer Cake, Flourless Sponge Cake, and something called Kitty Litter Cake.

As the northern hemisphere slips excitedly into Spring those down under are coming to the end of their summer. Time I think to have a look a the New Zealand and Australian food blog scene to see what they are up to -

Tomatom seems to be having a ball blogging across Vietnam while Chocolate in Context seems to be enjoying to the full the renaissance of chocolate in Melbourne. "currently awash in new flavors, new techniques, and the general acceptance of chili as a hot chocolate flavoring".

More chocolate over at Esurientes with a delicious looking Chocolate Cherry Cake. An Easter flavour at Cook Almost Anything Once with some delightful looking Hot Cross Buns. Certainly look a little better than mine (to be in a post later today)! Some interesting looking Yoghurt and Pistachio cakes, with recipe, at A Few of My Favourite Things. Can't say I have seen fresh pistachios around these here parts though.

Savoury rules over at The Laughing Gastronome with Pork Rilletts. Not something I have ever thought of making is rillets but these sound easy to make so I might just give it a go. Finally Bron is having fun with potato gnocchi  which are, again, something I have never been tempted to make.