Thesis Cakes

I love Harry Potter, I love cakes, so naturally, I’ve made a butterbeer cake.

Did you know there are a ton of butterbeer recipes out there? It’s a thing! Go Pinterest it! There are butterbeer cake and cupcake recipes everywhere! Some of them look sickly sweet: they contain butterscotch, loads of brown sugar, AND cream soda.  Cream soda in cake? Nope.

I wanted to make a butterbeer cake that was true to the world of Harry Potter, but tasted good too. Apparently when asked about butterbeer during an interview, J.K. Rowling said, “I made it up. I imagine it to taste a little bit like less sickly butterscotch.” (I also asked Aaron, who said he imagined it tasted like yak butter tea.)

This is one of the first cakes in which I actually *adapted* a recipe and added my own elements (versus following someone else’s recipe). I am very proud of this. Feels like catching my own snitch.

I devised a Milkbar-inspired butterbeer cake with brown butter cake, butterscotch ganache, butterscotch-brandy liquid cheesecake, and a brown butter and butterscotch crumb. This might sound really sweet, but I used plenty of brown butter, cream cheese, and brandy to even out the sweetness of the butterscotch.

Ta-dahhhhhh! I think it turned out very nicely! And just in time for Aaron and my fall tradition of watching Harry Potter movies.

The cake was so good that we only shared a couple of slices with some sweet new neighbors of ours.

I had plans to give more of it away, but Aaron and I were very Golum about this cake. My preciousssssssssss…..

It’s as if a Hagrid hug turned into a cake. Eating it is like having Hagrid hug the inside of your mouth.

And I think it has a nice Harry Potter look too, right? I think it looks like something that Molly Weasley might serve to you at The Burrow. And the butterscotch ganache drips look potion-y too. Double, double, toil and trouble!

Can you even get over this cake cross section?! I am truly sad that I cannot share it with you right now.

This cake is my patronus. Try me, dementors!

Okay, enough of the dorky HP references.

In other news – Ansel turns TWO next week! I can hardly believe it.

He is really hilarious these days. Having tantrums and talking up a storm.

I remember several months ago I was really worried that he was not talking enough. When asked what a cow says, he would stare at me blankly. Now he moos all of the time! He even sometimes calls cows “bovine”!

And as I’ve shared before, we have been taking him on lots of hikes on the weekends and he actually will walk for good stretches at a time.

Although to make the hike “work,” we often need to strap him in the backpack.

This last hike we took was by Lake Cushman close to the Olympic National Park. It was totally gorgeous.

One thing I love about the forests here are that the trees themselves grow mini-forests. I want to shrink and go live on the side of a tree on the Olympic Peninsula.

We tried to take some family shots, but they were challenging. This is the best one. In the other 8 shots, Ansel is squirming out of our arms to get back on the trail.

Hope you all have a wonderful pre-Halloween weekend. I’m planning a Halloween cake and crossing my fingers that I have time to do it.