Bake 2019 - August

My first bake of August was this Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread from Sally's Baking Addiction.  I made them into muffins.  They were so good we didn't get any photos.  I shared them with people at work and they were very much enjoyed.

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I LOVE making my own birthday cake.  I usually make a yellow cake with chocolate buttercream.  But this time I wanted to try something different.  I got the idea to make a chocolate peanut butter layer cake.  

I made a chocolate devil's food cake using two 8 inch round pans.  I made a peanut butter frosting and a chocolate buttercream.  I put the peanut butter frosting in the middle with some crushed peanut butter cups.  Then I used that same frosting as a crumb coat.  After chilling the cake, I frosted it with the chocolate buttercream.  I put some of each frosting in a piping bag and piped some rosettes on top.  Lastly, I topped the rosettes with mini peanut butter cups.  Here it is again because it looks so pretty!

Here's the inside.  This cake got rave reviews, compliments from some stingy compliment givers, and my coworkers/pastors said it was excellent and legit!

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My next bake was a saved fail.  I was trying to make a vertical cake from Sally's baking challenge.  Basically, you take a thin sheet cake, roll it, and then stand it on it's side.  In my effort to not over mix I under mixed.  When I poured the batter in the sheet pan there was a BIG clump of flour.  I tried to mix it up on the pan but that made it tough after it was baked and too thin.  Oh well!

I had some leftover chocolate peanut butter buttercream from my birthday cake.  I put that in there and rolled it up.  Still tough and thin, but the flavor is good.  

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I made a pot of turkey cheeseburger soup and felt like it needed some beer bread.   There is a really great beer bread recipe online that I use.  It's on Gimme Some Oven and it couldn't be easier.  

I used a lemon shandy so it didn't really go with the soup.  It was more of a dessert and needed icing instead of butter.   Still good!

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My next bake was Sally's Baking Addiction's Blueberry Muffin Bread.  I am finding that most of Sally's recipes are just great.  They always work out as expected and very rarely do I find something that needs tweaking even for my personal taste.

My plan is to slice this up once it's cool.  Then we can taste test it and freeze some for when Mom and Dad come to town to have for a breakfast treat.  

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I ended up making a quick batch of lemon cupcakes with vanilla buttercream.  

I made a tray of minis and had enough batter leftover for four big ones.  I took them to small group and there was only one mini left at the end of the night.  

There was a bit of a fail with the mini tray.  I didn't have mini cupcake liners and some of them stuck.  But those scraps won't go to waste.  I'm saving them for cake pops.