Its a little crazy over here at CU right now. We are up to our eyeballs in group projects that (of course) we have known about for weeks but have been procrastinating on (obviously). So I'll keep this post short and, of course, SWEET. These are all recipes I found on Pinterest and consider to be fairly quick to make and don't require any crazy ingredients. I'm super excited to try them out, but that may not happen until my Thanksgiving break when I go home and have time to breathe. This, of course, are for you to try after you've checked out our mug cakes, both pumpkin and chocolate.
Thats all I have time for tonight, stay sweet everyone :)
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It was past midnight and I had just realized I needed an immediate chocolate fix for finishing my homework. A quick browsing on YouTube led me to this recipe by Steve's Kitchen. The ingredients are all things you probably already have at home- not like the pumpkin mug cake ( sorry Hayley!!), just some butter, sugar, eggs, all purpose flour, unsweetened cocoa powder, baking powder and of course lots of chocolate. I decided to halve the recipe to reduce the calorie intake (really bad choice).
Let us know if you have tried any other mug cakes that you want us to give a try.
Over the weekend, I wanted a quick, single serve dessert and found this PERFECT pumpkin mug cake recipe. I should not be allowed to have more than a single serving of dessert anywhere in my house, because that one serving turns into two, three, or six servings. Dangerous. Anyways, I found this cake recipe on the The Novice Chef’s blog and it incorporates a bunch of ingredients that all of you pumpkin fans probably have lying around. As a poor grad student, I appreciated this because I used the cheapest ingredients I could find and it still tasted great. The original recipe calls for vanilla cake, but I went with yellow, because I prefer that. The cheap $1 (on sale) box of store brand worked great. Here are all the ingredients I used, remember...poor grad student. So, I made this in a bowl and then transferred it to a mug sprayed with cooking spray, for an attempt at making it look good….you can judge the results. If I weren’t trying to take photos of the result, I would have just made it in and eaten straight out of the mug. I modified the recipe slightly because I didn’t have pumpkin pie spice and like almond-coconut milk better than regular milk these days, but it still worked out perfectly. You can find the original recipe on the Novice Chef, and here is my version. 6 T yellow cake mix 2 T canned pumpkin puree ½ tsp cinnamon ½ tsp nutmeg 1 T coconut-almond blend milk 1 T vegetable oil whipped cream (obviously) Mix all the ingredients together, cook for 1 minute 30 seconds and top with whipped cream! How easy is that?? Its not the most beautiful of cakes, but with tons of whipped cream and a little cinnamon, who even cares. Its just for you, right?
Let us know how your cakes turned out! Location: 2710 Arapahoe Avenue Specialty: Literally nothing bundt cakes Price: $ Website: http://www.nothingbundtcakes.com/bakery/co/boulder When I hear the phrase “bundt cake” all I can think about is the scene in the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” where the Greek mother has no idea what a bundt cake is and cannot pronounce the word. Anyways, this stop on our bakery tour took us to Nothing Bundt Cakes, a cute little shop on Arapahoe with great displays of cute cakes and a few other holiday-themed products. They literally have nothing but bundt cakes at this shop in a variety of sizes: tiny bundtinis, bundtlets, and two larger ones. Upon our arrival we were greeted very warmly by the manager, Deana, who answered all of our questions about the bakery. The bundt cakes come in a variety of flavors; the most popular are chocolate chocolate chip, white chocolate raspberry, and red velvet. All the flavors are laid out in a display case and look so delicious we had a hard time choosing! In addition to all their regular flavors they also have a rotating monthly flavor and since it is fall…can you guess what that flavor is?? It has a certain orange squash in the title. The pumpkin spice was not overwhelmingly spiced, which is just how I like it in a cake, and their signature cream cheese frosting was a perfect complement to the moist cake. Eventually we settled on a bundtini of white chocolate raspberry to share with our classmates (we can’t eat at all these bakeries and not share a little!). The shop does not have an area to sit, because it caters mostly to taking larger cakes away from the shop, and it was cold outside so we didn’t want to sit. Once we got back to CU and tried it, we realized it was a delicious and moist cake with tiny pockets of raspberry that were the perfect relief to the sweet cake and frosting. Yum. Nothing Bundt Cakes is a great Boulder bakery, and in addition to picking up little cakes at the shop, you can purchase the larger ones on the spot for parties or birthdays or just to have a whole cake. We highly recommend either the white chocolate raspberry or the pumpkin spice if you go soon!
Location: 3990 Broadway, (North) Boulder Specialty: Croissants Price: $$ Website: http://www.luckysmarket.com/luckys-bakehouse_and_creamery/ When you go to your local grocery store, what are you expecting from their bakery? Maybe some crazy-sugary cookies and cupcakes, or a vanilla cake with whipped cream frosting? No question, the bar is set pretty low. Lucky’s Bakehouse and Creamery in North Boulder surpassed all those expectations and then some. What we learned: get there early for croissants The Bakehouse is located adjacent to the main Lucky’s grocery store in North Boulder. Walk in and immediately start eating with your eyes. The display counter has a diverse and colorful array of cupcakes, pies, cookies, bars, full cakes, and ice cream. YUM. It all looked delicious. We were told that the croissants are the specialty- they make 15 of each of 3 types (regular, chocolate, and almond), every morning; they’re usually sold out by 10am! We will definitely have to make a morning return trip ASAP. What we ate: Carrot cake and blondies My only complaint about the Bakehouse is that there are too many options! We couldn’t decide what we wanted. After ages of deliberation, we settled on a carrot cake cupcake and a blondie. Both were absolutely delicious. The carrot cake had visible shreds of carrots and was not super sweet, and the cream cheese frosting was perfect. Not that you can ever go wrong with cream cheese frosting. The blondie was also a perfect level of sweetness and topped with lots of toasted walnuts. Bonus points for being gluten free! Lucky’s Bakehouse is a spot that we will definitely be visiting again. The wide variety of baked goods and even ice cream makes me wish I lived in North Boulder, closer to the shop. They take pride in their small-batch, house-made products and for good reason. They make so many delicious products, with a large portion of them gluten free. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that they also serve ice cream and coffee (Hayley's two favorites). The shop is very cute with tons of light and a garage door that is opened during warmer weather; a great spot to hang out and chat with friends and eat a tasty treat. We highly recommend this shop for all your baked good cravings.
Our first bakery tasting endeavors got off to a rocky start. It was a little after 6 PM on a Tuesday, and the two bakeries we visited were closed. Luckily, Boulder is home to Boulder Baked, a dessert shop open until midnight every night. BB specializes in its baked-to-order cookies, cakes, grilled cheese, and other comfort foods. Additionally, they have vegan and gluten free bakery options available. How the cookie crumbled We went for the basics, getting a four-pack of fresh baked cookies. The 28 flavors on the menu were overwhelming in the best way possible, and with help from the employee (word choice?) we chose the chocolate chip, peanut butter, oatmeal cinnamon chocolate chip, and white chocolate macadamia nut. All four were baked to gooey perfection. Hayley’s favorite was the oatmeal cinnamon chocolate chip because of its crispy outer edge and the combination of cinnamon and chocolaty goodness- like a snicker doodle with chocolate chips! Saraswathi’s favorite was the white chocolate macadamia nut- something light after all the sweetness ;) Overall, Boulder Baked wins for their warm, fresh-baked cookies in tons of flavors. They also do delivery and pick-up, but we highly recommend going to the storefront to eat your cookies as close to the oven as possible. PS: If anybody is trying out Boulder Baked let us know we would love to tag along!!! |