I've been dying for an excuse to make all the messes that go along with this cake and when Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito say "this is a slightly showy, purely holidayesque affair" the real translation is: you really don't want go through all the bowls in your kitchen just for any old day, so save this one for when you have the time off from work to take on a. the baking & assembly and b. the ginormous sink-full of dishes.

When the host of our little family dinner shindig hinted she'd like a log cake, but wasn't sure if she should ask knowing it would be quite an undertaking, I practically squealed in delight. I've always wanted to attempt a Bûche de Noël, and since my lovely mother gave me Baked Explorations for my birthday I've been absolutely salivating at the chance to make their cooler more distinctly "Baked" take on this classic.

As I was slapping together the cake to take to this year's double whammy awesomeness annual Halloween party/Saints game madness, I realized that a year ago I was making my first decorated cake. I mean yes, there were cakes before last year, but that Nightmare Before Christmas cake marked a turning point when I actually put pen to paper and drafted up a sketch of one of the many crazy ideas flying around in my head and challenged myself to make it look the way I envisioned.

I look back on the past year and all of the late nights, crazy plans and disastrous messes with great fondness. It is so exciting to think about how quickly a year flies by and how we spend our time and who we share it with. It also makes me laugh at my own insanity and appreciate my husband so much more for putting up with me.

On more than one occasion, I've had someone feel bad when they picked up the cake and after the initial awestruck I can't believe you made this moment passes and they ask, "How late did you stay up working on this?" ....yea... Let me just put everyone at ease. While I can be an irrational and quite unpleasant person when I don't get my beauty rest, I'm actually part insomniac/total procrastinator and get some of my best work done under pressure at two in the morning.

Please enjoy this recap of some of the craziness I've whipped up in the middle of the night with the dog and cat watching and wondering what the hell daddy's going think when he wakes up and sees this mess... And make sure to check Crumby out on Facebook to keep up with what I'm working on.

White cake is the blank canvas of any cake decorator's arsenal of tools. Right up there with the always scrumptious yellow birthday cake and chocolate buttercream, white cake with white frosting may be the Plain Jane in a world where maple bacon cupcakes are all the rage, but true classics never lose their charm or appeal.

Whether you're a purist baker at heart, or a dreamer with lofty ideas of being your own Cake Boss or Ace of Cakes, this white cake recipe is a must for everyone. It can bring back that wonderful nostalgiac feel of licking the bowl with mom as a kid or it can be the basis for some wild modern creation. I know, I know--I say it all the time--but it truly has become one of my new favorites. Since I first tested it, I've made it into 4th of July Cupcakes, a totally 80s pimped out Goonies cake and a classic frosted cake to celebrate the Saints season opener against the Vikings, and it was everything I dreamed of every single delicious bite.

Ever invite someone over for dinner at your house only to get a nice little reminder on Facebook that your dinner guest is in fact celebrating their birthday...with you...tonight? Ooops! I did and dang it, I was not going to be the bad hostess who didn't even have a celebratory cake when I was the one who invited him over! So what's a girl to do when you don't have time to stop at the store because you still have to get home, clean and cook dinner on top of dessert? Turn to the Barefoot Contessa, of course and whip up one of the best chocolate cakes you've ever had: Beatty's Chocolate Cake.

Rich with dutch process cocoa powder and the secret ingredient--Coffee, this is one of my go to chocolate cakes. If you don't want to spend the extra dough on the dutch process cocoa, then don't bother with this recipe because it just won't be the same if you skimp. My favorite brand is Pernigotti, which you can pick up at most Williams-Sonoma locations, but any good quality dutch process will do. The cup of hot coffee just balances out the chocolate oh so perfectly to make this cake an absolute can't miss!

Even with my own wedding anniversary coming up at the end of the month and so many of my friends getting engaged or married, the whole getting older thing is something that hasn't really sunk in very much. With each passing month, it something that gets harder and harder to ignore. After most of your friends graduate from college (even the stragglers) the next big milestone that screams "YOU'RE ALL GETTING OLDER," is getting married. It's a slap in the face for all of those (who am I kidding--all of us) Peter Pans out there who don't want to grow up. I've hit the age where singles are dropping like flies and weddings feel like they're every other weekend. Every wedding that passes makes you stop and think about life and what you're doing. They force you to think about the future and what it might look like, but the best part is that they make you celebrate the present. Weddings celebrate the very best parts of life--family and friends and love. Once you realize that you're surrounded by some very cool people who will be there for you no matter what, getting older doesn't seem like such a bad prospect.

One of my dearest friends from high school is getting married next month and a while back I offered to bake for them if they had a need for any of the numerous parties that always seem to go hand in hand with weddings. His lovely fiance asked if I could do some fruity cupcakes for a lingerie party, and I jumped on the opportunity to whip up something utterly delicious! I figured you can never go wrong with something pink at these events, but I still wanted to keep it simple and classy, I went with Martha Stewart's strawberry cupcakes and strawberry buttercream. Definitely one of my new favorites.

This cupcake is not overly sweet and the moist, dense batter balanced well with fresh strawberries chunks  and gave them a great burst of flavor. The strawberry buttercream was just devine and complimented the cupcakes perfectly. Made with fresh strawberries, it was just the right balance of sweet, creamy, strawberry goodness with out being too sweet or packed with artificial flavors. For a topper, I melted some chocolate and made little white chocolate coins and piped A's on them. Easy and quick for just a little flair of decoration.

Hooray for people who like my baking and actually want to pay me for it! My first non-cheesecake paid request for a cake came from one of my husband's co-workers. And, although I have dreams of opening my own bakery on Freret St. when I win the lottery, my aspirations are oh so silly when you consider the way I work. I find my baking process somewhat similar to my writing process, and it brings me back to freshman year of college in my Communications Writing class. Sure I could whip out a story or a press release in an hour if you asked me to, but I'd much rather mull it over for a week. Let it simmer in the back of my head for a few days before I actually sit down and pop something out. Most call it procrastinating...I prefer to think of it as planning.

Baking is exactly the same way--it's a process. It's my process. I like to sketch it out in my head, tweak recipes, mix up the cake I found here with the frosting I got from that other book someone gave me. I like to research what other people do to overcome different obstacles. I think about how I can make crawfish made from fondant really look like an actual crawfish or how to get those edges nice and sharp. This cake on the other hand, while my process was definitely there it was packed into a short time frame from finding out via text message Monday that I had a request for a cake for Wednesday. That left Monday for mulling and Tuesday for making. It all worked out, but I would have liked to spend more time on the presentation.

So after picking up a new cake book, All Cakes Considered by Melissa Gray (the producer of NPR's ATC), my co-worker (and fellow cake aficionado) and I decided we needed some Cake Mondays in our lives as well. Why let those NPR folks have all the fun? Initially, I really wanted to make my Baklava Cheesecake because it is one of my all time favorite recipes and I haven't made it in what seems like ages. Keith however, staunchly disagreed, "Aryanna. You cannot make cheesecake! It's against the rules. The whole point is to be a challenge and you've already mastered the cheesecake discipline." Now according to Melissa Gray's rules, it has to be a completely from scratch absolutely no cake mixes recipe and you have to change it up every week. I don't recall the challenge being part of it, but I guess it was one of those unwritten rules.

Begrudgingly, I tucked my Baklava Cheesecake recipe to the back of my head ready to make an appearance eventually some Cake Monday in the future. Once I finally accepted the fact that I would be making a completely new cake I've never tried before, I thought it was only fitting to use one of Ms. Gray's recipes since she was the inspiration for the project and what better recipe to choose than the cake that inspired her project: Martha Washington's Great Cake.

By the time it came around to frosting and decorating the last two batches of cupcakes for my sister's shower, I had about 30 minutes to make the frostings, decorate the cupcakes, take a shower and get be in the car ready to go. In hindsight, having everyone over for breakfast that morning might not have been the smartest idea when I obviously had other things to do. Thankfully, mom came to the rescue and picked up my gift from the store. Thank goodness Zuka Baby has online shopping and in-store pick up!

As the resident family baker--not that I am the only one in the family with mad cooking skills--I guess baking just appeals to me more than to my siblings... On a side note, I always find it so interesting that my sister, my brother and I all ended up with crazy mad cooking skills. Growing up, my kitchen memories aren't the picturesque child standing next to mom watching what she was doing. In fact--not that my mom never cooked--but most of my memories are of me making some huge mess by myself and without my mom's knowledge...and then laughing at the shock on her face when she strolled into her newly flour covered mess of a kitchen followed by the screeches of "I swear Yanna, one day I'm going to come home and the whole house is going to be burned down!" Growing up in a single parent home, we all pitched in more than it seems our two-parent friends ever did. Dinner was another chore that we all had to help out with and we rotated days so everyone had to cook.

At the time I just loved being in the kitchen and never really thought anything of it. Looking back, I value it so much more because that was the start of my joy and passion for cooking. Luckily at the summer camp I went to, Summer Discovery (best summers ever!), I got to take advanced cooking classes and I never turned back. It's been one crazy experiment after another since then and I wouldn't have asked for my childhood to play out any differently. Whenever I meet people my age who can't cook...ehem...my husband...it's just flabbergasting. I don't know how they survive. At least my lovely husband straight up admits my cooking is definitely high up on the list of reasons why he married me, and as long as he washes the dishes I don't mind.

Anyway, back to where I started, as the resident family baker I was commissioned to make the cupcakes for my sister's baby shower. While we all can't wait until little baby Mia finally makes an appearance, the baby shower for her and her parents posed quite a fun challenge in the meantime. Of course I wouldn't be me if I didn't come up with some hair brained overly challenging plan. Since the co-ed shower is Caribbean themed and I wanted to have some variety in cupcake choices, I finally settled on 4 batches of 12 cupcakes in Rum Cake, Coconut Lime, Roasted Banana, and some Chocolatey chocolate flavor. I had originally planned to also make all kinds of different toppings and Caribbean themed decorations for each different cupcake but once I realized I didn't want to spend the whole week making them, I decided to keep it simple. Check out what I ended up with...

So my friends and I annually overindulge ourselves in the bliss that comes every spring in New Orleans--Crawfish Season. What better accompaniment than an overindulgent, overambitious 7 layered chocolate cake? According to everyone in attendance, none! It was the hit of the party, which made me feel oh so much better about spending 2 weeks of planning and 1 week of production on this bad boy.

Complete with fondant crawfish popping out the pot and completely edible fixins including meringue mushrooms, marzipan potatoes and fondant lemons and even served on a newspaper wrapped board, I spared no expense in making sure all the details were accounted for, even if I did get a bit lazy and never made it around to making the ears of corn on the cob that were in the initial plan.

Here's how it all played out (yes go ahead and call me crazy now for even thinking I had any business trying to pull this off):

This could quite possibly be my favorite cake ever. Really truly ever! Anyone who is a chocolate peanut butter fan...and even some who aren't will LOVE this cake from Sky High: Triple Layer Cakes. 

I've also made this recipe into cupcakes with just the cream cheese peanut butter frosting, which were delicious but just didn't quite have the same umph as the cake. DELISH!!! I really am quite at a loss for words at how absolutely amazing this cake is.