Shipley Do-Nuts

June 2014 Wrap Up

My oven wasn’t as busy in June as it was in May, but I still had some fun projects and several delicious treats to share with visitors and dinners with friends.

Breads & Muffins

The only muffins I made this month were my standby banana+ muffins. I have accumulated a ridiculous number of bananas in the freezer, so when Leighton requested I make some of these muffins with coconut added in, I made a batch for a play date at our house. I often get asked about the bananas I use for these muffins, so I thought I’d share here that I freeze and then defrost my bananas whole in their peels. It’s the only way I’ve ever done it, so I can’t compare to peeling before freezing, but it’s easy, so I love it!

Brownies & Bars

I made Oreo cheesecake bars (I merged these two recipes: 1, 2) the first night our friends were visiting from Vancouver. The adults all enjoyed them, but the kids mostly enjoyed the brownie layer and not the cheesecake layer.

Cakes & Cupcakes

The only cake I made this month was this cake for Quinn’s 5th birthday, which was my 2nd opportunity to work with the Disney Frozen theme (the first being these birthday cupcakes). If Riley has anything to do with it, I will be making more to fit the theme in the future!

My one set of cupcakes this month was horse cupcakes for Mireille’s birthday party.

Cookies

To accompany the cupcakes, I also made horse cookies for Mireille’s birthday party.

Decorations & Toppers

To decorate Quinn’s Frozen cake, I made many snowflakes in white and blue, and (thanks to the suggestion from the girl who works at the store I was printing the edible image of Elsa) I also made the number 5 topper for the top of the cake using an edible image over white fondant.

To top Mireille’s cupcakes, I made brown horse heads out of royal icing and one white and pink horse head out of fondant and royal icing. The white and pink one was a special cupcake for Mireille to have for blowing out her candles, and I made it to match one of the stars of the birthday party locationSugar, the pony with a pink mane!

Pies & Pastries

The kids and I were very excited to spot some beautiful looking rhubarb at the grocery store last week, so strawberry rhubarb tart made it onto the menu when we had friends over for lunch and swimming. I had made this same recipe once last year (the photo is actually from that occasion since I forgot to take a new one this time around!) and it was just as delicious as I remember. It’s a perfect blend of a fruit pie (I used this pie crust recipe and not a store-bought frozen crust), a custard tart, and a crisp/crumble. Perfect for an indecisive person like me!

Other Goodies

Twice this month I made strawberry shortcake, and although ‘cake’ is in the name, the recipe I use is more like a soft scone than a traditional cake. I’ve been making this same recipe for years because I like the texture, but it always bothered me that there is a slightly strange taste to the cake from the large amount of baking powder, so I finally was brave enough to reduce it to 3tsp try to rectify that. It definitely worked! As expected, the layers didn’t bake up as much, but I didn’t mind because now it tastes exactly how I’ve always wanted it to.

We are big ice cream fans in our family, and occasionally (but not often enough!) I make my own. Inspired by the amazing Shipley Do-nuts flavored gelato created by Trentino Gelato that we recently tasted, I created my own ice cream version. I started with a vanilla base (I used our go-to recipe) and then followed the methods outlined here and here to soak chopped donut pieces in the base to infuse the flavor into the ice cream. I originally intended to use a sieve to remove the pieces before churning the ice cream, but I was worried there wasn’t enough flavor developed due to my limited infusion period, so I left them in. It turned out that the flavor was very well developed, and the pieces didn’t detract from the ice cream like I worried they might.

4 Responses

  1. pollysplayground

    mmmm… all of it! I actually emailed mom awhile ago asking her to freeze some rhubarb so I could have some with ice cream when we are there. Thinking we might need to try making some timbit Ice Cream too!

    • Becky {Rebecca Cakes & Bakes}

      Sounds like a plan to me! Will have to be on night one that we do the ice cream so that any ‘imported’ donuts from the big city are fresh 😉

  2. Anthea

    Thanks so much for the delicious and beautiful cookies and cupcakes for Mireille’s birthday! You did such a great job creating just what I had pictured in my mind. The birthday girl could not decide whether to eat or make neighing sounds when she was holding a horse cookie in her hand!

    • Becky {Rebecca Cakes & Bakes}

      I loved making them and am so glad they made M happy! Her party was so fun!