Mini-cake rampage.

I can be such a moody person. I often go on these baking rampages where I'll only make one thing for days or weeks in a row, and get really into it. Some moods, I would bake nothing but cookies. Another time, all sorts of filled cupcakes. And this time....mini cakes. I bought several mini cake pans when I was in SoCal, which, I might say, could possibly be the best thing 99 cents can buy. I found these cake pans at target recently for $4.99!! These pans were actually tucked away in my cabinet for almost two years before I decided to dust off the new, and break in the old.

I came up with all sorts of cake variations, but the two most popular ones are what I decided to post.

Once upon a Tuesday, I had a bunch of banana's leftover and was tired of making banana bread from a few days prior. Instead, I was planning on making banana cream pie, but I really wanted to make some sort of cake. So I came up with my version of a banana-coconut cream cake. It's a vanilla cake soaked with a coconut flavored sugar water, and filled with bananas, banana custard, and a thin layer of dark chocolate. The frosting was made with fresh whipped cream covered in toasted coconut.

I promised my aunt that I would make Michael (her Cuban bf) a surprise birthday cake. And this was the first time ever that I had made a cake of such large proportions. It was a half sheet. It pretty much took all morning and afternoon, along with the help of my sister. Speeding up to the 'surprise, happy birthday ending,' Michael loved the cake, along with all of his Cubano friends. They love bananas and coconut. They really raved about the cake, and I saw one of his friends horde almost a quarter of a cake to herself... maybe she was saving it for later.

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I had four lemons and instead of making lemon meringue pie, I decided to make a cake instead. I was brainstorming on the couch one day what kind of cake I should make... and I came up with a great combination! I had several key ingredients that I really wanted to use, which was lemons and frozen raspberries...ta-da!

Anyway, this cake is a lemon-raspberry cake...but I like to call it a 'pink betty.' I don't know how I came up with that name, but whatever. It's a vanilla cake soaked with a light lemon sugar glaze with lemon curd filling, topped with a raspberry whip cream frosting. I just used my lemon meringue pie recipe for the filling. As for the frosting, I used frozen raspberries, pureed them, and folded it into fresh whipped cream. The cake doesn't sit well for more then two days...it gets bitter :( I was trying to save a slice for a rainy day, but obviously that backfired on me.

I am horrible at photography. Most of the time, I usually forget about taking food pictures till the last minute, and when I do, I could care less of how it looks. But it sure is tasty.