Hello! It’s Toni from Design Dazzle sharing this Valentine’s Day crazy cake recipe today. It is always such a treat to share over here on Made From Pinterest. Especially when I get to make sweets to try out and taste! When I stumbled upon crazy cake recipe from a Sweet Little Bluebird, I knew it was meant to be. A cake with simple ingredients that I have on hand and can be mixed right in a greased baking pan?! Not to mention people with food allergies who can’t eat a “regular” cake with eggs or milk or butter. It was love at first sight.

I decided to give it a try, making two batches using the original recipe from a Sweet Little Bluebird, and also making a gluten free version with a few slight modifications. The only ingredients I switched out differently were to use gluten free flour and use 1 1/2 tsp of baking soda rather than 1 tsp.

This was my favorite step! I love not having dirty an extra mixing bowl. Less clean up means more time to enjoy cake!

I’m not sure how necessary this step is for the cake to turn out properly, but I do think it is important to make the 3 depressions- one is slightly larger than the other two.

When you pour the water in, it kind of swirls the vegetable oil, vanilla, and vinegar.

Make sure to mix it all together very well to avoid any lumps!

Now you certainly can cut up the cake and serve as typical cake squares. But since it’s Valentine season, I decided to use a heart-shaped cookie cutter and cut out heart shapes with the cake. Store bought canned frosting with a little pink added was a cute addition for making little dots with peaks on the heart-shaped cake. Such an easy Valentine treat for loved ones.

Thank you so much to the blog, Sweet Little Bluebird, for the recipe. This is definitely the easiest cake I have ever made, with the least clean-up. I love simple recipes like this!

This cake tastes good but wouldn’t win the worlds most tastiest cake. But due to the fact, with the simple, on hand ingredients, the recipe works with food allergies and it’s easy with quick clean up, I would have to say that this pin rocks! For the gluten free version, it really needed the frosting to take it up a notch!)

Crazy Cake for Valentine’s Day Recipe

Recipe Type: Dessert

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 Cups flour
• 3 Tbsp cocoa (unsweetened)
• 1 Cup sugar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt

• 1 tsp white vinegar
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 5 Tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 Cup water

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease 8 inch square baking pan.
2. Mix all dry ingredients right into the greased baking pan. (My favorite step!)
3. Once the dry ingredients are thoroughly mixed, make 2 small and 1 large depressions.
4. Pour vinegar in one small depression, vanilla in the other small depression, and vegetable oil in the larger depression. Then pour water all over the mixture.
5. Mix well until there are no lumps.
6. Bake for 35 minutes (oven times may vary, be sure to check!).

The gluten free version I used 1 1/2 cups of gluten free flour (Pamela’s) and used 1 1/2 tsp baking soda. Everything else was exactly the same.

*I frosted the gluten-free cake with coconut pecan frosting. It was a yummy addition!

Be sure to check out my blog, Design Dazzle! Here are two posts I shared recently:

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Toni Roberts
designdazzle.com

This awesome post has been shared with Home Stories A to Z and Living Well Spending Less.

The post Crazy Cake Recipe appeared first on TGIF - This Grandma is Fun.

I’ve been a candy connoisseur my whole life. Eating and tasting many candies and lots of candy bars. One of my favorites is an Almond Joy. It’s just pure deliciousness. My hubby will occasionally purchase one and give me one half and he eats the other portion. A shared candy bar is the best. Almond Joy is very easy to share right up there along with the Reeses Peanut Butter Cup.

I saw this recipe online for Almond Joy Cupcakes by Confessions of a Cookbook Queen. And boy did they look yummy. So I decided to go for it and make her recipe. It’s really like eating an Almond Joy in cupcake form! Almond extract was the perfect ingredient for the frosting. It’s just what a good buttercream needs for a cupcake like this.

The batter was like a very thick pudding. Using an ice cream scoop to measure the batter into the cupcake baking liners was an easy way to do it!

So a few little tweaks that I changed to the recipe. I used an icing tip to remove part of the middle of the cupcake. These little cake morsels are tasty so quickly gobble them up!

Instead of using the ganache for the top of the cupcake, I filled in the middle part with ganache. The cupcake looked a little cleaner this way. I would say it ends up being about 1 teaspoon of ganache inside the cupcake. So not too much!

Sprinkle the coconut on top of the ganache and before you frost the cupcake. Then sprinkle a little more coconut on top of the icing.

I would have to say this pin ROCKS! Thanks bunches to Confessions of a Cookbook Queen for such a mouthwatering cupcake that tastes just like an Almond Joy!

Print

Almond Joy Cupcake

Course Dessert

Author Design Dazzle

Ingredients

• Cupcakes:
• 2 cups flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup Dutch process cocoa powder I used Hershey Special Dark
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 4 eggs
• 1 Tablespoon vanilla
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup 1 stick salted butter, melted
  
• Buttercream:
• 2 sticks salted butter slightly softened
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 2 teaspoons pure almond extract
  
• Ganache:
• 4 oz semi sweet chocolate roughly chopped (or I used chocolate chips)
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 cup light corn syrup
• 2 cups sweetened shredded coconut, for garnish

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350. Line 24 muffin tins with cupcake liners and set aside.
• In the large bowl of a mixer, combine flour, sugar, salt, cocoa powder, baking soda, and baking powder. Combine with a whisk. Add eggs, buttermilk, and melted butter. Mix on low for 30 seconds. Scrape the sides of the bowl and increase mixer speed to medium -- beat for 2 minutes. Batter will be thick (and yummy. not that I'd ever eat raw batter).
• Fill cupcake liners 2/3 full. Bake cupcakes 15 - 20 minutes or until tops spring back when lightly touched.
• While cupcakes bake, make your ganache: In a microwave safe bowl, combine chopped chocolate and heavy cream. Microwave for a couple minutes, stopping to stir every 30 seconds. Once the mixture is smooth, remove from microwave and stir in corn syrup. Place bowl in refrigerator until the ganache is thickened.
• Prepare buttercream: In the bowl of your mixer, beat butter, almond extract and heavy cream on medium speed until smooth and combined. Turn mixer speed to low and slowly add powdered sugar until barely mixed in. Increase speed to high and beat for about a minute, until light and fluffy. Frost cupcakes, top with a spoonful of ganache and coconut.
• Notes
• If you want extra high frosting on your cupcakes, double the frosting recipe.

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This post has been shared with Living Well Spending Less.

The post Almond Joy Cupcake appeared first on TGIF - This Grandma is Fun.