We love cakes!

I take on custom cake orders from time to time - and I especially love to do this during summer months when edible flowers and berries are available for simple, elegant decorations.  Here are a few of the latest cakes that have left our kitchen...some vegan, some gluten-free, some sugar-free, some wheat-free - we can do it all!  The flowers for decoration are from our gardens...

In case people are interested in a few details - the first is a gluten-free flourless chocolate cake that is near the top of the list for most decadently rich that I have made - it's tastes like a chocolate mousse cake with a crisp brownie-like top.  The recipe is from an excellent blog with loads of recipes called the Gluten-Free Goddess.

The second is a vegan vanilla cake with raspberry filling and chocolate vegan buttercream icing, and calendulas - the recipe was adapted from a book all you vegan bakers will already be familiar with - Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

The bird cake was an attempt at a vegan, wheat-free, sugar-free cake for our 2-year old's recent birthday.  The bird and nest were shaped out of vegan pie dough, and the icing made of sweet potatoes and maple syrup (so the colour of the cake was a light orange, not quite what I had in mind but it was ok).  The cake was made with cooked millet, which doesn't sound like it would be tasty, but the grain actually made the cake quite moist and there was enough vanilla in it to give a nice flavour.  The cake and icing recipes come from a cookbook filled with simple healthful recipes for the whole family, called Feeding the Whole Family: Cooking with Whole Foods.

The fourth cake is a vegan triple chocolate layer cake, again adapted from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World (basically make a triple batch of cupcake batter, but bake it in 3 large cake pans).

The next cake was a sugar-free carrot layer cake, with icing made of cream cheese and agave.  This was also a birthday cake - it's decorated with bergamot petals and violas.

Custom baking - triple chocolate organic & fair trade mocha cake

I had an interesting request this week - to make a very special cake! The request came via email, from a woman in the UK (Wales), whose daughter is on exchange at the University of Waterloo for a year. Her daughter is turning 21 this week and the mother hoped to have a decadent handmade cake made as a surprise for her. She had come across our website when they had initially come to Canada and tried to book a space in our B&B (we were unfortunately unavailable and never met the family). How could I refuse? I have been free-lance custom baking for about ten years now, and love doing these kinds of requests - each one tends to come with a unique story, and I always appreciate people who are looking for something handmade, rather than store-bought. Any excuse to make something decadent is always fun, especially as we don't tend to eat many of these kinds of baked goods around this house too often.

I wouldn't call this cake exactly healthy, but I did use whole food ingredients - real butter, free-range eggs from our hens, local real cream, organic flour, pure dark chocolate, fair trade cocoa, fair trade dark coffee. No hydrogenated substitutes here! The recipe comes from Wanda's Pie in the Sky cookbook (a wonderful pie, cake and confection maker from Toronto). It's a dense triple chocolate mocha layer cake, with mocha buttercream icing, a rich thick chocolate ganache dripped artfully down the side (I hope that's artful), and raspberry almond topping. I trust she will enjoy it! Happy 21st birthday to Lauren :)

Maya's Birth-Day Zucchini Cake

Baby Maya slept for almost 8 hours straight this past night (from 10 pm - 6 am), and is napping beside me again. Being a little more rested myself this has given me the impetus to rush around a bit today, working on this blog, cooking zucchini soup, harvesting basil to make pesto, drying calendula & hot cayenne peppers, hanging laundry outside, and supporting Greg on the strawbale construction, all at the same time!

Speaking of recipes that use up profuse amounts of vegetables, here is a zucchini cake recipe from my mom that is so moist and chocolatey that it can easily replace any other version of a chocolate cake fit for a birthday celebration. No one will ever guess zucchini is the secret ingredient! We made it just after Maya's birth, as zucchini was in abundance in our garden at that time. It may well become her traditional birthday cake for each end of July. Today (mid September) we still have zucchini in hoards, popping up unexpectedly every other day when I happen to move one of the zucchini leaves aside to discover it. I decided to make up the zucchini cake again, as well as zucchini chowder, zucchini bread, marinated zucchini, zucchini & fresh egg pizza, and more shredded zucchini to put away in the freezer! We'll be grateful for it in February.

Here's the zucchini cake recipe for all you chocolate lovers who want to get some of othe benefits of vegetables and "eat your cake too":

Maya's Birth-Day Zucchini Chocolate Cake
1/2 cup margarine
1/2 cup sunflower oil
1 3/4 cups white sugar
2 cups grated zucchini (add this at the very end)
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup milk

Mix all above ingredients except zucchini in large bowl. In separate bowl mix:

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
5 Tbsp cocoa
1 Tbsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon, optional

Add 2nd bowl to first and beat. Then add zucchini.
Put into greased 9x13 glass baking dish.
Top with:
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
1/2 cup nuts, optional

Bake at 325F for 45-60 minutes, until knife inserted comes out clean. Serve warm or cold.