Bake or Break

Chocolate Chip Snack Cake

I’m a big believer in simple recipes. If I were to guess, I’d say that the majority of you are believers, too. Dessert doesn’t have to be complicated to be good. Who’s with me?

I made this cake with a couple of my favorite ingredients, chocolate and pecans. The cake itself is packed with brown sugar and a touch of cinnamon for a little something extra.

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Reine de Saba (Queen of Sheba)

If you’ve been anywhere near the food blogging world recently, then you know that today is Julia Child’s 100th birthday. PBS has been posting chefs’ and bloggers’ tributes (including mine) to her for the last few weeks. And, for the last 10 days, many bloggers have been participating in #CookForJulia by making one of her recipes.

I decided rather quickly that I wanted to make this cake for the big event. I wanted to make a couple of changes and worried for about half a second that it would be wrong to do that. But, this is Julia we’re talking about! Julia, who once said that with cooking you have to have a what-the-hell attitude, would surely be fine with my taking some recipe liberties.

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Simple Blueberry Cake

My dear baking friends, I’m hoping you were intrigued and excited by the word “simple” in the title of this recipe. I can’t express to you how pleased I am to have this recipe in my arsenal. It is such a perfect way to make use of summer fruit that I know it will make many repeat appearances on my table for many summers to come.

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Lemon Poke Cake

If you’re unfamiliar with the idea, a poke cake is a simple, yet genius concept. After baking a yellow or white cake, holes are poked over the top. Then, the cake is covered with some mixture that will then seep down into those freshly-poked holes. After some refrigerator time, the cake is frosted.

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Cherry-Vanilla Yogurt Cake

I became very excited when cherries started appearing at our local markets a few weeks ago. It’s exciting because, well, they’re cherries! Also, the arrival of stone fruits mean that summer has peaked. (Come on, fall!) Anyway, I recently spotted some beautiful ones and snatched them up to bake as many things as I could imagine while I can.

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Black Cherry Sour Cream Coffee Cake

Despite how frequently I bake, my saved and bookmarked recipes to try keeps getting more and more ridiculous. I shudder to think how long it would take me to try them all, even if I stopped collecting them right now. There are some recipes I’ve had for years that shuffle up and down my to-bake list but somehow never get made. Until today, this was one of those recipes.

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