Dark Chocolate Raspberry Cake

Check out this beautiful cake I made for my Dad's birthday:

Four layers of perfectly dark, moist chocolate cake, with raspberry filling between each layer.  The whole thing is frosted with a dark chocolate ganache and topped with fresh raspberries.

Available soon from The Blue Door Bakery. :)

Love and Raspberries,

Leah Joy

Our Door is Blue!!!

Isn't it beautiful??

If you look closely, you might notice that not all the hardware is back on.  You might also notice Caleb through the windows, trying to get it back on.  That was a week-long process.  :)

Painting the door was #56 on my 101 Things in 2014 list.  The color is Valspar's Starry Night and I love it SO SO SO much!

Oh and for reference, here's what the door looked like before:

Love and Blue!

Leah Joy

The Monday Rant: Our Yard

Earlier this year, I shared this photo of my new hydrangea bush.

Since then, it has grown lovely bluish-purple blooms!

And then they started doing construction/electrical work on our corner:

My poor bush!  Somehow it's still alive, though!

Elsewhere in our yard, construction vehicles have left long trenches:

It's hard to tell in these pictures, but these trenches are a good foot deep.

Now they've finally finished the project (we hope), which was installing new traffic lights, but so far, they haven't cleaned up our corner.  Thanks, guys!

Love and Patience,

Leah Joy

P.S. I'm sure they'll eventually get to fixing the corner of our yard or it would reflect very poorly on them, but this project has taken months and months!

101 Things Update - The Dahlia Show

Chloe recently took me to the Dahlia Show at the Frederik Meijer Gardens.  There were rooms full of dahlias, so we couldn't pick just one picture to share with you!  All of these photos were taken by Chloe.

Isn't that last one crazy?  It looks like it's been painted on the wall, but it's totally real!

This final picture is of one of Chloe's dahlias, AC Devlin:

*sigh* They're just so beautiful!

Love and Petals,
Leah Joy

Cupcake Chronicles: 98 Minis!

Our church recently had its outdoor service, which is followed by a potluck.  We were assigned to bring a dessert (gee, I hate it when that happens) so I thought it would be a great time to test out some new cake recipes.  Four new recipes, to be exact.  And three new frosting recipes.  So, you know, 98 mini cupcakes plus some tiny cakes for taste-testing.

I made orange cake, lemonade cake, raspberry cake, and strawberry cake.

The orange cake got paired with a chocolate ganache, which was delicious, but didn't hold up well in the heat.  The orange cake was also just a bit dry, but really wonderful in flavor.  I'll have to work on that a bit. :)  Darn, more samples.

The raspberry cake was good, but not very raspberry-ish.  I topped it with a raspberry buttercream to help accentuate the flavor.  By the way - raspberry buttercream?  Yeah, I could eat that with a spoon.

The strawberry cake was super disappointing.  The texture was not that great, and it didn't even taste like strawberries.  However, I'm too Dutch to throw away 24 mini cupcakes, so I topped them with a delicious strawberry buttercream, which dominated the flavor (not a hard feat, really).

My definite favorite was the lemonade cake.  It surprised me how different a lemonade cake is from lemon cake.  They're both really delicious, though.  I also topped these with a raspberry buttercream (and some with strawberry), which was the perfect summer combo.  I wanted to eat them all!

Love and CAKE,

Leah Joy

Cupcake Chronicles: Rose Cupcakes

I was inspired by this video to make rose cupcakes.  You know, the ones where the entire cupcake is a rose.  They're so pretty in the video.  Here are mine:

The ones on the left are my first ones, and the ones on the right are after some practicing. :)  In case you couldn't tell.

In the tutorial, she said to add no milk to your frosting, but she must live in a very different climate, because the frosting was impossible to squeeze out of the bag with no milk.  I kept adding milk a tablespoon at a a time, refilling the bag, attempting a cupcake, 'finishing' the cupcake, scooping all the frosting back into the mixer, and repeating that until the frosting was actually pliable.

And you know what?  It still held its shape and was actually very stiff.

And they are really pretty.  My sister pointed out that the ones with jagged edges just look like carnations, so just pretend I meant to make carnations and roses the whole time. :)

I don't know that I'll ever be making this technique again, but it was fun to learn!

Love and Carnations,

Leah Joy

Cupcake Chronicles: Piping on Cakes

This cake was my first ever time piping swirly things on a cake.  I just made it up as I went along:

I also got to make a birthday cake for my friend who works in IT:

Love and Shaky Hands,

Leah Joy