Inauguration Cake: Raspberry Vanilla Cream Cake

Happy Inauguration Day!!! What a historic and joyful day :D! We now have a president with both a pandemic plan and a climate change plan ready to go and a female Black-South Asian American Vice President in the White House! To quote Kamala on Election Day, "We did it!"

I have been waiting for this day to come for so long! It has been so heartbreaking to see the division and polarization within our country these past 4 years, and this past year has been particularly rough. To celebrate the inauguration, I baked this mini Raspberry Vanilla Cream Cake, because all celebrations deserve some cake! We still have so much work to do these next few years, but today I finally feel the first twinges of hope.

Dumpster Fire Cookies

Happy New Years!!! I'm a couple days late, but we survived 2020! It was a tough, eye-opening year for all of us, filled with lots of "it can't get any worse, right?" dread and disappointment. This year for New Years I was debating what to bake, and instead of the usual gold glitter, pretty sparkles, champagne and strawberries type of dessert I would normally made, I decided to switch it up and make something more representative of how awful 2020 was.

It was a dumpster fire of a year, so why not make dumpster fire cookies? Some people make gingerbread houses, apparently I make sugar cookie dumpsters now :P. I had an internal debate on whether to make 2D vs 3D cookies, as usual 3D won. I decided on a base of colorful sugar cookie dough that would be cut into parts and glued together with colored royal icing. I free hand cut the cookie flames and baked them with my fingers crossed hoping they would turn out ok (they ended up way better than expected!). And made a chubby little trash panda (meet Kevin!) with the leftover dough. So there you have it, 2020 in cookie form.

I wanted to ring in the New Year with some "out with the old, in with the new" positive affirmations. I decided to symbolically "throw away" all my disappointments and frustrations from 2020 into the flames (to name a few: never-ending construction while working from home, everyone who spread false information about COVID-19 and undermined medical experts, the current administration, all those cancelled vacations, "all lives matter", fake news, racial and socioeconomic injustice...) and smash them with a hammer. It felt very cathartic :)! From the ashes and debris of 2020, we see a new dumpster representing 2021 (it's green because we're going to work on climate change this year, along with continuing the fight for equality :D). Hopefully 2021 will be a better year!

Happy Thanksgiving and a "Pun"-pkin Pie!

Hello Dear Readers! A quick announcement that I do have plans to start posting again on this blog in the very near future. Time has passed by so quickly; I can't believe my last post was in 2016. For now, what's Thanksgiving without a "Pun"-pkin Pie? Happy Thanksgiving and stay safe everyone! More updates in an upcoming post :).

Sorry, no step-by-step recipe post today!
Recipe Used: "Perfect Pumpkin Pie" by Once Upon a Chef (make sure not to over-bake to prevent the pumpkin pie filling from cracking!)

Decorations: I rolled out extra pie dough and used a knife to freehand cut the letters and leaves! Bad pun by me, original lyrics by Jay-Z and Kanye :3.

Golden State Warriors Lemon Curd Cake

This cake has been a long time coming! Every year, when the NBA playoffs come around, I always think about making a Warriors-themed cake (not sure why these thoughts don't pop up during the regular season, haha). But I always find myself busy with one thing or another and it never happens. This year I have no excuse! I'm currently on vacation before residency starts and one of my goals is to work on this blog and catch up on all the baking ideas I've had stored up… hopefully.

Additionally, I finally started using Instagram this past year (follow me: @diamondsfordessert :D!), and not too long ago, I discovered Joy the Baker's account @drakeoncake!!! It's the best, seriously. I was listening to music and 0 to 100 came on and I thought, you know what would be even better than Drake + Cake? Drake + Dubs + Cake!

I been Steph Curry with the shot

Been cookin' with the sauce

Chef Curry with the pot, boy

360 with the wrist, boy

So there you go. It was either 0 to 100 or Summer Sixteen :). Originally I was going to do a blueberry lemon cake, but the blueberry frosting ended up being a lot of work and not very blueberry-ish. So it ended up being a lemon cake with blue frosting (still looking for a good blueberry frosting!), but still yummy with the tart lemon curd filling. I ended up making a mini cake, but included the instructions for a full sized cake, a mini cake, and cupcakes (in case you're not up to making a full sized cake, but still want to try this recipe). Enjoy!

P. S. And yes, it is raining 3s in the background. I didn't want to wait for online shipping to buy basketball themed paper, so I made my own. Also, go Dubs! Happy NBA Playoffs :).