A Birthday Cake for Max

October 2, 2020 By Korena in the Kitchen 10 Comments

My son, Maxwell, turned 3 months old last week. When the first contractions began the day before he was born, I started to make him a cake to distract myself from early labour: the famous Milk Bar funfetti Birthday Cake, a “birthday” cake in a very literal sense. I managed to bake the actual cake before things got too intense to continue and I had to put it unfinished in the freezer to deal with at some point in the future. A little over twenty-four hours later, I had a baby in my arms. Six weeks after that I had my feet under me enough to finish assembling the cake. And now, another eight weeks later, I’m finally getting around to posting about it – because newborns and postpartum and learning to breastfeed are NO JOKE!

Newborn Max, and 3 month old Max keeping me company on the couch while I work on this post 🙂

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The Best Red Velvet Cake with Magical Cream Cheese Frosting

July 22, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 32 Comments

The Best Red Velvet Cake with Magical Cream Cheese Frosting | Korena in the Kitchen I’m going to be perfectly honest here: I don’t really get what all the fuss is about with red velvet cake. In fact, most of the time, I tend to agree with the guy who said, “it’s chocolate and red food dye, f*ck that, it’s dumb” (read that entire post – it’s hilarious!). I think that most people who say they like red velvet cake really mean that they like cream cheese frosting, and for that I can’t blame them – but the “red velvet” part just seems like a gimmick. I know it is seen as a classic in the southern USA, but the recipe for the brightly-coloured, dye-laden cake was actually developed as a crafty way for a food dye company to boost sales post-World War II. Plus, I find that the flavour of red velvet cake, which is basically a buttermilk cake made with a tiny amount of cocoa powder, doesn’t taste all that unique or special in the first place and is easily overwhelmed by cream cheese frosting. So when Whittney and Sam requested it for their wedding, I knew I’d have to do my homework to find a red velvet cake with flavour.

Red Velvet Cakes | Korena in the Kitchen

Red velvet cake-off

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Bake Sale Cupcakes

October 6, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 9 Comments

I made these a little while ago for a fundraising bake sale at work. This kind of thing is right up my alley: baking cute, individually portioned things that other people get to eat (someone’s gotta save me from eating them all myself!). Cupcakes are usually a pretty big hit at bake sales, and I’ve been wanting to make some for while, so I decided to use my favorite vanilla-flavoured yellow cake batter and then set about looking for a good frosting. I really really dislike tooth-achingly sweet powdered sugar buttercream, and Swiss meringue buttercream can be finicky to make and gets kind of expensive with all those egg whites and copious amounts of butter (plus, what to do with all the leftover egg yolks? Baking is so hard! ;) ).

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Blackberry, Lemon & White Chocolate Cake

September 30, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 13 Comments

Last weekend we went to Nate’s parents’ house for lunch to mark his mum’s and (now) 4-year-old nephew’s birthdays. Of course, two birthdays call for two cakes. Gunnar, the 4-year old, got a fantastic Mr. Bean cake, and I offered to make Kathryn, Nate’s mum, a cake. She requested a lemon cake (my nemesis!) but I was stoked to try to get it right finally – third time’s a charm, right?