Vasilopita – Greek New Year’s Cake

Happy new year! I’m sharing a very special family recipe with you today.  Vasilopita is a traditional Greek cake served on New Year’s Day (or thereabouts).  A coin is hidden in the cake and it’s said that whoever gets the coin in their slice has good luck for the year.  It’s a fun family tradition that I’ve done for as long as I can remember. This cake is part of a story of greedy kings and excessive taxes. It was used by St. Basil as a way to give taxes back to the people after the king was convinced to …

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Vanilla Cake with Whipped Buttercream Frosting

This is the kind of dessert that people sneak bites of before it’s dessert time. True story. I don’t bake cakes often, especially multiple layer cakes. Maybe it’s because I dread handling two or more cakes that inevitably don’t look symmetrical and I can’t frost cakes to save my life. Or perhaps it’s because I don’t have many occasions that call for a cake and I don’t want to make a whole cake for just me and my husband. Let’s go with the latter reason. 😉 Now a one layer cake, that I can do. After all, it’s almost like …

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Iced Lemon Pound Cake

If you’re looking for a lemon dessert then this lemon pound cake is it. I’m kind of weird when it comes to lemon desserts.  If I’m presented with lemon pie, cake, cookies, you get the idea, I initially politely pass.  “I don’t like lemon desserts,” I’d say.  But somehow I usually cave and end up trying it.  Usually it’s a piece off of my husband’s dessert.  Let’s face it, I love pie, cakes, and cookies, so it’s hard to resist.  “Hey, that’s tasty,” I say.  I guess you could say that I don’t like the idea of lemon desserts, but …

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Pumpkin Cheesecake

There was a day when I didn’t care about cracks on top of a cheesecake. My husband has made this pumpkin cheesecake a few times (before my blogging days) and we’re pretty confident that it cracked then too and yet we continued to make it again and again.  Why?  It’s out of this world delicious.  We loved it.  Our families loved it.  We’ve never made any other kind of pumpkin cheesecake because there is no need to try any other when you’ve found one that tastes as good as this one.  Plus, it’s easy to make. I debated on whether …

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Banana Crumb Cake

I’m on a mission to make every flavor of crumb cake possible. If you search “crumb cake” on my blog then you’ll see that I’ve made a few.  I can’t help it.  I just love crumb cakes. This crumb cake combines two of my favorite recipes, the cake part from the banana cake recipe and the crumb topping from the coffee crumb cake recipe.  The end result is a moist banana cake topped with buttery crumb topping.  Be still my heart.  This combo is as wonderful as I had imagined it to be.  I love it when that happens (because it’s not always …

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