Just a quick post to share something exciting with everyone! The Huffington Post recently featured Read Make Do’s Lemon-Lemon Ombre cake on their Taste page. Check out the slideshow here! Why, thank you HuffPo!
Thanks everyone for reading, and for the love and support!
P.S. If any of you ever give the recipe a try for yourselves, send me your photos and let me know your experiences! I’d love to hear your guys’ thoughts, it’s seriously a really fun cake to make 
love, kate <3 
Tuesday’s post featured my current favorite cake recipe: The Chocolate Coconut Dream Cake. So where did I take my most recent cake? To my beloved friend Stephanie’s birthday party!
Stephanie rang in the big 2-4 with the classiest tea party I had ever seen. She made the obligatory tiny sandwiches (goat cheese & cucumber, and salmon & cream cheese), raspberry tartlets, homemade sangria (putting the PARTY into tea party!), and my personal favorite: MINI PIES.
My favorite thing about the Mini-pies (aside from the fact that I got my own pie all to myself, and a mini-pie has way more crust than a normal slice of pie. YESSSSS) is that she was able to make tons of different flavors really easily. There were blackberry apricot, pluot & berry, pear, the list goes on.
Other friends contributed homemade scones, decorations, and flowers. It was truly a very classy party. The decorations were adorable vintage tea and cake stands, vintage china, and of course, a good helping of lace and crochet everywhere.
Why don’t people throw more tea parties? I want to start a book club now, where we don’t actually read books but we really just eat crumpets and put lemon curd on everything. Stephanie, your domestic prowess inspires me–now pinkies up, let’s throw another tea party soon!
Sometimes I joke this blog should be renamed Read Cake Do, or Read Make Cake. Probably because of my undying love of cake. Which is why I wanted to share one of my very favorite cake recipes. This is the cake that inspired me to start this blog in the first place, this is the legend: The Chocolate Coconut Dream Cake.
The thing that makes this cake so awesome is probably my favorite “secret” ingredient: Buttermilk. It is one of those things that you never usually would buy otherwise, but it makes ALL the difference in the world in creating a really moist, fluffy cake. Don’t have Buttermilk? Can’t get any at your local store? Try plain yogurt instead, it works great too.
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
2 1/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup Kaluha Liquor
1/2 cup cocoa
3 cups sifted cake flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 sticks butter
6 cups powdered sugar
4 Tbsps whole milk
1 tsp coconut extract
1/2 cup shredded coconut
3 drops pink food coloring
So that is how you make my current favorite cake creation, which we have come to call the Chocolate Coconut Dream Cake. I hope you enjoy it!
I’m very excited to have help with this post from Caty of Omnom Treats! Caty answered my prayers: I’ve been dying to learn more about decorating cakes (sometimes I think this blog should be renamed Read Cake Do), and she stepped in to share some of her know-how and talent. So without further ado:
You will need:
– whatever flavor you’d like!
.)
Caty and I found it helpful to remove the bottom of the cake, and really focus on crumbling the middle to have really fluffy cake crumbles. Just pick up a piece of cake, and break it apart in your hands. Easy!
Add about 1/4 cup of frosting at a time, mixing it in thoroughly before adding more. This isn’t really an exact science, you just want to mix the frosting in until you can form the cake into balls that won’t fall apart–but at the same time, you don’t want them to be too “wet” from the frosting.
Roll the cake-frosting into small round balls, smaller than a ping-pong ball, about 1″ in diameter. Place them on a cookie-sheet, and then pop those bad boys in the freezer for about 15-20 minutes, until they’re firm.
You need to get your double-boiler going and melt down those candy chips. Then, take the pops out of the freezer. Dip the tip of your stick into the melted candy-coating, and then gently push into the cake forms.After you finish all of them, stick the almost-ready-to-go cake pops back in the freezer for 10 more minutes and then get ready to decorate!
Dip each pop individually into the melted candy, taking care when you remove it to tap off the excess coating, rotating the pop as it cools so the coating is even. If you feel like you want your pops thicker, you can always go back later and re-dip.
While the candy is still hardening would be the best time to add your sprinkles, so get in there! Get whimsical with those things, they are crazy!!
We dried our cake pops by pressing them (by the sticks, not the tops!) into styrofoam squares. You can always improvise, or it won’t be the end of the world if you lay them on waxed paper while they cool, they’ll just have one flatter side.
So that’s it! They are so easy, and really really delicious! My favorite thing about these is they are about 2-bites each. It feels like such a treat, rather than having to eat a whole cupcake, or an entire slice of cake.
Thanks again, Caty!
So tell me, what is your Cake Pop plan? Any super cute decorating ideas? Killer flavor combos? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Thanks Again, Caty from Omnom Treats!
